You won't find the old quick launch toolbar any more. New taskbar allows you to pin any application icon on to the taskbar just by dragging and dropping. This way you can keep the required applications right on the task bar. Jump Lists is another useful feature added to in Windows 7. A Jump List appear when you right-click on a taskbar icon. This gives quick access links to locations inside your application. For an example if you right-click the Windows Media Player on the taskbar it will display the previous playlists, songs, movies which you played recently.

Another nice feature is if the taskbar item is representing a file download or a file copy it displays the progress bar on the taskbar item itself. This way you don't have to open the windows to see the progress. (see the third taskbar item above which shows '45 seconds remaining' which is a file copy).

Normally we have about 10 - 15 windows open at a time. (Sometimes I have about 50 windows open). When multiple instances of the same application or multiple tabs in Internet Explorer is open it was a bit difficult to find a window when you need it. But the improved taskbar item previews allowed a great solution for this problem. When the windows from the same application are combined, and when you move your mouse pointer over the combined group it displays the previews for all the windows. This has been there in the Windows Vista also, but here the improvement is if you move your mouse over these preview it'll hide all the other open windows on your desktop and display the windows which the mouse pointer is currently on. If you don't need the window you are looking at, without moving away from the preview area you can close the window by clicking the close button appearing on the top right corner of the preview. Once you get use to this you'll never waste time trying to find a window you need. However when it comes to a tabbed browser such as Google Chrome this doesn't identify all the tabs as separate windows yet.

Another side of personalization introduced with Vista was the Side Bar and Gadgets. Side Bar is no longer there in Windows 7, but Gadgets (right-click on the desktop and select Gadgets) are still there. But you can still snap gadgets to the right-hand side on the desktop. This is like an invisible sidebar. Or you can have your gadgets floating on your desktop. I have tested many of my favorite old gadgets on Windows 7 and all of them works fine without any issue. After all it is HTML pages. However a tool to create new gadgets would be a nice addition to the list of tools in Windows 7. Strangely, support from Microsoft to develop new gadget is surprisingly disappointing. There is no support in Visual Studio to develop new gadgets or there is no other tool to develop them. You just have to manually develop them.

Personalization window has evolved into something really nice and user friendly. Themes are displayed with preview images indicating the wallpaper, window colors and transparency etc. Most importantly when you change a theme it won't take ages to get apply. Selected theme gets applied almost instantly. Another improvement is, it allows us to have a set of images as a slideshow for  the wallpaper. Earlier we had to use third party tools to achieve this. Also the windows color changing options are more detailed. You can access this personalization window by right-clicking on the desktop. Same like Vista here also you can find the 'Basic' and 'Classic' themes. And there are several useful and nice features that come with the Aero User Interface. If you browse to the online themes gallery by clicking the 'Get more themes online' it'll show you few new themes for you to download. It would be nice to have a larger collection of themes.

Comparing documents, web pages of File explorer windows is something most of us do on a regular basis. If you have seen the good old 'Tile Vertically' or 'Show Windows Side by Side' in Vista options on the taskbar right-click menu you already know how to do this. But there was a major problem with this option. When you select these options it vertically tiles all the open windows. Not only the two windows that is required to be vertically tiles. Only way was to minimize the rest of the windows and then select the option. But the new Aero Snap feature is a very good method to overcome this. You just have to drag and drop the window to left and right edges of your screen. Also moving a window to the top of the screen will expand it to full screen.

Aero Shake is another handy one. At anytime if you want to minimize everything on your screen but keep one window active for you to work on this features comes handy. Just hold from the title bar of a window and shake it a little bit and you'll see rest of the windows will get minimized while the shaked one stays. to bring everything back to normal shake the same window again.

Desktop gadgets can play an important role when providing information you need right on your desktop. Think about a gadget displays weather, traffic, new mails etc. But when you have multiple windows open you cant see the contents on your desktop. Or if you want to check whether a document you need is on your desktop you have to minimize all the open windows. What if there is a option to peak at your desktop while working but without having to minimize or close the open programs. Aero Peak is the new feature which does that. Just move your mouse to the bottom right-hand corner of the screen where you'll see a small button looking area on the far right-hand corner on your taskbar and suddenly you'll see all window contents disappearing while the window frame staying, giving you a full view of your desktop. Click the button area to minimize all programs and go to the desktop.

We have another one year for the final version to come out according to the current announced timeline. More features will be added during this time and some might get kicked out. Also features in this beta will be fine tuned over the next couple of months. In case if you are wondering ... is Windows 7 going to solve all the previous problems? My answer right now is ... I don't know. I think it’s too early to say. Hoping it will. As I have pointed above, some of the new features included in this beta version seems quite useful, attractive and promising. But don’t expect Windows 7 to perform well on a 10 year old or even on a 5 year old PC.

References: WinSuperSite, Microsoft Corp