Mike: Well, if you're currently running windows XP or windows Vista, this is a great segment to tune into. We’re going to have a look at some of the features of windows 7 and why you will want to potentially upgrade. We got Sue Borden here from Microsoft, thanks for coming on the show.
Sue: You're welcome.
Mike: So for all these people running windows Vista and XP, why should they upgrade?
Sue: Well, with windows 7, we really did a lot of listening when we were preparing to launch a new product. And one of the things that we heard overwhelmingly from consumers is they wanted to have ways to make their computing experience a lot easier. And so one of the cool things that we’ve done is we’ve actually improved upon the task bar. We’ve actually made the icons a lot bigger and one of the reasons we have is because we also introduced touch technology with the windows 7. So the larger icons make it a lot easier to work with touch technology.
The other cool thing that we’ve done with our task bar is we’ve actually introduced what's called a Jump List. And a Jump List is basically a little menu of the files that I've recently used. So if I'm working on a document at work or if I'm updating my budget at home, with one click, I can go to that specific file without searching for it. And the great thing is that, I can actually do that without the application running.
Mike: So it’s all right there?
Sue: It’s all right there.
Mike: And obviously you got Word there, but you can do Excel, Photoshop or anything.
Sue: And here's my Media Player, for example. Here's my recent list of music that I played. So that’s called the Jump List.
A really neat feature that’s in windows 7 that we’ve introduced is this Peek feature. So as I hover over the right hand side, you can see that everything goes transparent and I can see what's happening on my desktop. What I can do is I can grab one, and if I want to focus on this photo of my son. I can actually grab it and shake it, and everything else around it disappears.
Mike: Oh, love it. So you don’t have to go back there and starts minimizing everything.
Sue: Exactly. It automatically cleans up your screen. And if I want to bring it all back, I just shake it again, and everything comes back.
Mike: It’s like magic.
Sue: It’s like magic. And another magical thing that I want to show you is if I want to compare things now side by side, I can actually drag and bring it over. And it automatically resizes.
Mike: I love that. Because there's so many times that I do want to compare things, but I'm sitting there resizing them there. And it takes about 20-30 seconds.
Sue: That’s right.
Mike: Lets talk about the security features now so that’s obviously a big concern now with a lot of users.
Sue: If we go into the user control center, we can see that we can totally control the level of permission and set for this PC. So I can choose to go in to my user account control and with this slider I can choose the level of security that I'm comfortable with. If I don’t want to be asked permission, so I'm just changing my window settings. If it’s something that has to do with third party software, then absolutely, let me know. So I can totally control that.
Mike: And so, for my understanding to now, when you have pop up warnings. You know, like your antivirus is out of date and what have you, they all reside down in the action center here.
Sue: That’s right, so you're exactly right. So what happens now is that rather than having all these messages that kind of pop up at you, it’s all consolidated within one window now.
Mike: So they're not in the way you all the time.
Sue: Right. And you can choose the level of notifications. So because it’s all consolidated in one view, you can choose if you want to act on it right now or if you want to deal with it later on.
Mike: Very cool. Thanks for showing all the new features. Where can people find out more information?
Sue: windows.ca.
Mike: Sue Borden from Microsoft talking about the latest features of windows 7.
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