Goodbye Windows Vista and hello Windows 7. Last week, Microsoft released a new version of their operating system. It is called Windows 7 and is being marketed as a fast, agile, easy to use improvement from their last operating system release called Windows Vista.

Some of the “new” features aren’t really new, but improved.  Here are the top 4 in my opinion…first off is the Pin feature…this is not new, but is still helpful as it provides the ability to control where your programs appear on your taskbar. All you need to do is drag the icon to where you want it and it stays there until you move it. You can even pin specific documents and web sites to Jump Lists on your task bar.

Next up is Snap…this feature provides a quick way to resize open windows by dragging them to the edges of your screen…when you drag the window to the edge of the screen, Windows will resize it to 50% of your monitor size. This is helpful if you are trying to compare two windows side by side.

Homegroup is a new feature that focuses on sharing of files and music within your home…Homegroup will make it easier for you to print to a printer on the home network or send/play music on another PC that is in your home.

Lastly is Windows Touch…the touch screen functionality has been around for some time, however Microsoft has extended it to every part of the pc with this release…for example, now the start menu and taskbar have larger icons for those of us with fat fingers. This feature also supports something known as “multi-touch gestures” such as moving your fingers apart to zoom in on an image…something that the iPhone does very well.

So what are people saying? Well, I did a little market research and talked some techies that I know and the feedback was pretty positive. None of them reported any installation issues, although, there have been issues reported on the some blogs and support groups. Most of the issues that are reported seem to be focused on upgrading…with the clean install appearing to work pretty well.

Microsoft does get some bad press for releasing buggy code; however in my experience it is common for early users to experience some issues. Even Apple users encountered issues when installing Mac OS 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard earlier this year.  Most new software glitches work themselves out over time, either with a fix from the vendor or solutions posted by the user community and this is precisely why I will wait a little while before installing 7 on my computers…

The full version of Windows 7 Professional is $299, with upgrades going for $199 with an upgrade from Vista or XP costing $119.

Have fun with this and send me an email to let me know how it goes!