What 7 Can do Over Vista…

1. Shake it Away

Do you have over a million programs open at once and find them cluttering your desktop? Want to clean them off the screen without actually closing them? Simply just grab the top of the window you want to keep open and shake it about on the screen to scare away all the other applications.

2. Jumplists

This simple yet innovative idea to come with 7 can save you a lot of hassle. Giving you a list of recently accessed files without the need to even open the application, all you have to do is click the arrow on the right hand side on the application in the taskbar and there it is. All your recently accessed information.

3. Snap into Place

This is surprisingly useful. Simply drag your window to the left or right edge of the desktop to snap and resize the window to one half of the screen. Drag the window to the top to maximise it, or use the simple Windows key plus any arrow key (depending on where you want to put it).

4. Homegroup Networking

Always wanted to share your folders and files wirelessly with other computers and networks with little hassle? Windows 7 finally does it, well with Windows 7 it does anyway, using the 'Homegroup' wizard, check the default folders you would like to share. This will give you a passcode that will have to be entered in another computer on the same network to share the files. Sounds too good to be true? There is a catch: only a Windows 7 computer can join a Homegroup.

5. The Taskbar

I don’t know what it is about the taskbar in 7 that makes it so great, it might be the fact that I don’t actually want to hide this one away, it has a use. Its large but so helpful allowing you to pin almost any program you want to it, giving you easy access right there in front of you rather than trawling through the start menu.

Bonus. XP mode

For those XP applications that do not work under Windows 7, you can download XP Mode free from the Microsoft website and run XP applications in an emulated XP environment in Windows 7. Imagine Parallels on Mac OS X without the need to fish out money on an extra OS.