Five secret features in Windows 7

Windows 7 has launched, but it's already in the hands of many people across the UK thanks to a postal strike sparking Microsoft to begin deliveries early. If you've already installed your brand new operating system then you might be interested to hear about a few features that haven't been well-documented, but could prove useful.

If, on the other hand, you haven't had a chance to get everything backed up for the install process yet, you might want to bookmark this page so you can have a butchers at it over the weekend once everything is up and running again. But without further ado, let's take a look at the top 5 secret Windows 7 features.

[Christopher]

Oh, right, none of them.

Installed Win 7 last night. I hate having to reinstall everything when I'm coming from Vista, but I decided to do it anyway. Anyway, it was a good way to 'clean my HDD' in some ways. Going to have to play with it tonight, but I don't expect my gaming to be worse than Vista, but likely not better at all either.

Luckily haven't run into any issues with installing Vista drivers on the system.

[The Lazy One]

If you went from vista to 7 you didn't have to do a clean install. You can install and bring everything you had in vista over...

[lsujester]

Clean installs are always better, though. Always.

As for why this is here, if you play a PC game, you have to go through the OS. So even the specifics of this article aren't gaming related, they are something the average PC gamer moving to 7 might want to know. The website is News for Gamers, not Gaming News.

Same reason you'll find articles on here about Linux on the PS3, or Netflix on the 360. Neither of those have jack to do with gaming.

[Christopher]

Yes, you do if you went from Vista Home Premium to 7 Professional. The problem is that features that were in Vista Home Premium are now in 7 Professional or above only, so I either got the basic version or kept the features I was looking for and have to do a clean install.

Check out the upgrade chart, you'll see that many people will have to do a custom install (meaning, clean install and having to reinstall applications) depending on what they buy.

http://www.technobuzz.net/w...

@lsujester: I come here for news about gaming, not news about general PC stuff that doesn't relate to my gaming experience. If I were looking for news not related to gaming, I'd look elsewhere. That's my opinion, though, that's all. I only mention it here since I can contribute to the conversation otherwise, otherwise I stay away from these type of topics.

[Elven6]

There's a tech category on this site as well you know, and Windows 7 has a lot to do with PC gaming, DirectX 11 and all those other gaming improvements for one.

[Major_Tom]

Windows still doesn't shut off unnecessary spooler apps or background programs when you're playing a game it just ties up your ram and your processess in the background, running cycles that it doesn't even have to. They could've done alot more but yet again leaving it up to the user.

Dx11 really hasn't even proved itself either, you need developers to make you want it and so far it's not worth it. The cards themselves will be worth it however.

[The Lazy One]

who would go from home premium to 7 professional? that seems a little bit the opposite of what you'd want to do.

[Elven6]

The OS came out yesterday and the PC game development industry has "changed" so it might take a while before we start seeing DX 11 adoption, maybe even a bit longer to see it in "full action".

[Christopher]

As I said above, certain features that were available in Vista Home Premium are now only available in Professional or Ultimate. The problem is that Vista overlapped too much from one to another, and now that they've downsized to only 3 versions, there's going to be some features in Win 7 Professional instead of Win 7 Home.

And it's fine that you guys disagree with me. It's kind of the expected thing. It's only my opinion, which I'll share whenever it comes up.

[sikbeta]

I only want to know for real, if eat ram as vista do

[Christopher]

I've found the start up time to be about the same as Vista for me.

RAM use hasn't been an issue, but then again I've always had 4 gigs, which is been more than enough since I don't run games at full capability since I'm on a laptop and not a gaming desktop.

I do like the MAC-like icon pinning to the taskbar, though I wish there was a bit more in the way of customizing the look of it.

I got my upgrade 50% off from Amazon.com months ago. I don't think I'd be that happy paying the $199 for the software right now and I do believe these prices are fairly exorbitant on MS' part.

[Mnemonic-DK]

Pro has Win XP mode, Home Premium does not.

http://www.microsoft.com/wi...

[Ninjamonkey]

Haha tried them pretty neet.

The first one is hugely pointless but quite fun =P

[DevastationEve]

I get mine for $10 since I joined Microsoft ExpertZone which is for employees of electronics stores.