7 thumbs-up and 7 thumbs-down features of Windows 7

7 thumbs-up and 7 thumbs-down features of Windows 7

If you had to name the seven best and seven worst features from the Windows 7 beta, what would they be? That's the task that editors at Network World assigned to Tom Henderson and Brendan Allen from the Network World Lab Alliance. The testers loved the revised look and feel of the GUI, raved about One-Click WiFi. But perhaps the thumbs-up feature that IT professionals will appreciate most is Policy-based Auditing Enhancements. The testers say:

"Microsoft's Windows usage policies have been powerful when implemented via Active Directory, but using them requires a lot of administrative contemplation and implementation overhead (meaning work). The policies that can be set in Windows 7 are a superset of Vista and XP policies - with some interesting possibilities. We show one of them - the Sensitive Privilege Use policy here. Policies can first track behavior and then provide sophisticated barriers to adverse user behavior where needed. This screen grab also shows the long-awaited, useful Explain tab, which actually does a good job describing the implications of setting this policy."

Click image, or click here, to see a slideshow of all 7 thumbs-up features.

As for the most-hated feature? Tom Henderson and Brendan Allen say it is that Windows Explorer still needs work

They explain:

"The venerable Computer Explorer local search tool crashed on us frequently when we tried to do heterogeneous access to NFS and SAMBA/CIFS network shares. Explorer never meaningfully divulged what was wrong - it just quit running, and sent us circular error messages. The error logs were equally inarticulate. We're betting this problem gets fast attention because it's a show-stopper for network resource access."

Click image, or click here, to see a slideshow of all 7 thumbs-down features, which begins on slide number 11.

Stay tuned tomorrow for our next Windows 7 episode entitled: Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, a love story. We've got the lowdown of the best and worst features of both betas from one of the blogosphere's foremost Windows authorities. (Hint, he's the mastermind behind of The Supersite for Windows.)

Visit the Microsoft Subnet web site for more news, blogs, podcasts. Also see:

Windows 7 beta wrecks your MP3 files (already has a patch)
Ron Barrett: Why Windows 7 will crush Linux
Mitchell Ashley:Why Windows 7 will never kill off Linux
Windows Server 2008 R2 beta ready for downloading
Glenn Weadock: Windows Server 2008
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• Microsoft
• desktop management
• policy-based auditing enhancements
• Windows 7
• Windows 7 beta
• Windows management
• Windows Server 2008 R2