Windows 7. What’s so special?
Windows 7, I have heard so much about you and see very little. However I did get a great website from a friend in the chat room that had a video of a rare interview with Larry Osterman. Larry has been with Microsoft for a very long time and in this video he discusses some of the accomplishments that Microsoft has made with windows 7 and the audio stack.
One of the “awesome” features that Microsoft is bringing into the windows 7 architecture happens to be something that I have been longing for quite some time. The feature will allow a third party voIP service to tell windows 7 to turn down or pause media content coming from windows media player. For example if you start to receive a call on Skype, windows will automatically turn down the volume in windows media.
The way Microsoft does this is by automatically deciding what audio output is your speakers and what audio output is headset. By doing this windows can break all audio into two audio stacks. Therefore giving windows and the end user better control over their audio devices.
All in all this is a huge step for Microsoft in the right direction when it comes to centering the windows experience around media. If you would like to watch the video I have added a link below. Please leave your comments and questions in the comments section.
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When I had my hands on the pre-beta W7, I didn’t get the chance to test out the audio-ducking features. I still think they are great additions to W7 though.
What I did like was the changes to the start bar. The ability to “PEEK” into other application windows for a moment without actually switching to the application and then back to what you were working with before. Less alt-tabing. The added feature of being able to see “grouped” windows show up in a preview thumbnail is cool too. They all show up at once. With the thumbnails opened up from the taskbar, you can close applications/windows with the middle mouse button or clicking on the X that shows up in the thumbnail too. i love that feature..
One other feature I liked about the taskbar was the idea of getting rid of the “quicklaunch” bar. Its all integrated in a nice way so its not really needed any more. Its more “MAC” like. Sure you could say they stole that idea from the mac.. but hey who cares? If it works, why not?
I’m very pleased with the pre-beta version they released at the 2008 PDC. I used it for a month and had next to no problems at all with it. I can’t wait until it actually goes RTM.
I appreciated it.