Tech Spotlight

Another extremely useful feature added to the next generation OS of Windows 7 is a progress bar that fills up on the taskbar itself.  When downloading files, copying files, burning files, etc., you will see a nice progress bar that glows translucent on the taskbar.  Very cool.

In previous versions of Windows, you would always have to bring the dialog box to the front to see the progress of the given task.  Windows 7 makes it super simple, no matter if your multi-tasking or if you have tons of other windows open.  A quick glance at the taskbar will inform you to a percentage complete bar.  Microsoft really curtailed this Operating System to every nook and cranny with features like this that make computing easy and fun.

Microsoft introduced WEI (Windows Experience Index), a computer rating system and benchmark test with Windows Vista.  The ratings were in the range of 1 (lowest) and 5.9 (highest) scale.  Microsoft at that time was planning on having the scale enlarged over time but this never developed with Vista.

Jump ahead to Windows 7, the next major release of the Operating System due out sometime in October of this year, and Microsoft extended the rating scale between 1 to 7.9.  This is very smart due to the wide range of computer hardware available, and also speed and performance has been drastically improved over the past several years.

So now all of us consumers of Windows will want to place as close to the top rating of 7.9 as possible.  Quad core chips, 8 gigabytes of memory and fast video cards will help us achieve a high score, not to mention Solid State Hard Drives that will surely increase this also.