I have been using Windows 7 on my production laptop since the betas and have been fairly impressed with some of the ideas that Microsoft has put in place. I have also read several articles on how, finally, Windows 7 is as good as Mac OS X. Well, its not – at least not quite.
First of all, Windows 7 is getting a lot positive reviews because it is the first version of Windows to actually work well out of the box since, well, Windows 2000. That’s a bit like praising a car manufacturer for producing a car that finally doesn’t break down every few miles. Don’t get me wrong, I like Windows 7, I just don’t for a second believe its what the punditry are making it out to be; which is the next great OS. Anyway, on to the point of this post; having used Windows 7 for a few months, here are my gripes about the the OS that mainly focus around the newly redesigned Windows Task Bar; the aptly named “Awesome Bar”.
Inconsistent behavior of closing Windows: Since all applications are now grouped into one icon by default, selecting to close all windows has different behavior behavior for different applications. For example, when I select to close all windows on Windows Live Messenger, it closes all the windows and quits the application. Do the same on Skype, and it keeps running in the background even though the icon appears as though it is not. I am sure this will get fixed as more apps are updated for Windows 7.
Fixed Size: I think its great that Microsoft have turned the quick launch bar into the task bar, the only problem now is that unlike OS X’s dock, it doesn’t resize depending on the number the icons in it. Your only solutions are scrollbars (really) to get to the extra icons, manually expanding the task bar (and losing some screen real-estate) or selecting to use smaller icons (which if you are like me will fill up the bar eventually).
Hover and Click: Another new feature introduced by the awesome bar is Aero peek. As all the application windows are grouped under one icon, hovering the mouse over the icon shows a preview of all the windows. A few issues I have with. One, the hover doesn’t always respond and requires me to click to invoke Aero peek. Second, When I mouse over the window preview, Windows hides all other windows except the one I have moused over, which is nice. However, it does this by leaving ghastly outlines of ALL other windows. This effect looks ok if you are a light user. For a power with so many windows open, it just looks a complete mess.
No application load status: There are a few applications that I manually run when I log into Windows and each one takes a bit of time to start. The task bar does not give me any indication at all that I have indeed clicked on the icon and that the application is loading. What usually happens is that I end up clicking the icon again and end up with two instances of the same application. The task bar needs the equivalent of the bouncing icon that exists in OS X.
No folder shortcuts: When I first read about the new task bar, one of the reasons I was looking forward to it was having all my frequently used folders at a single click. This unfortunately is not the case, the task bat is only for applications and all other shortcuts are added to the respective application’s icon. So to access my folder shortcuts, I have to right-click on the Windows Explorer icon and then click on the shortcut I want.
Can’t close an application before it fully loaded: Just as in OS X, the problem with having icons next to each in a row is that every once in a while, you end up hitting the wrong icon. In OS X, I can immediately right-click the icon and select “Force Quit” to stop the wrong application from loading. Using the awesome bar, there is no such reprieve and one has to wait until the application has finished loading before closing it. Annoying when the wrong application happens to be Photoshop or Visual Studio!
