Wanting to be a head of the posse, I decided two years ago to purchase Vista on my new Asus Tablet. I basically struggled along for over a year and a half with a laptop that I now know was only half performing. On more than a few occasions almost found itself chucked out the window. Then Windows 7 came along – I tossed and turned – wondering would I make the same mistake again if I went for an early version. Anyway, I bit the bullet, and it would be an understatement to say that I haven’t looked back. Some of the things I’ve noticed with Windows 7:
- My tablet doesn’t take all day to start up.
- It takes even less time to shut down (used to take forever with Vista).
- The search facility actually finds folders and files.
- The scren orientation on my tablet actually works as it should (and I don’t have to change it manually from time to time).
- Windows 7 isn’t cloggin up my disk space (it just seemed to disappear with Vista 30-40GB, I lost count).
- It doesn’t keep telling me that device drivers don’t work or are incompatible with the operating system.
- The handwriting recognition runs much smoother.
- I have actually started to like my tablet again.
I particularly like the preview feature along the taskbar which gives you a small snapshot of each of the files you have open (and I usually have lots of them) – you can hover over and click on the one you want to use.
So how does Windows 7 in with education? Now that many schools are going out buying new laptops, should they be looking for Windows 7 or stick with XP as many people are still inclined to do. I say go for it!
In the US, eSchoolNews got teachers from diverse school environments to test and review Windows 7 and they say it improves on many of the features that were problematic with Vista, while outperforming XP many times over. This article 7 Things Teachers Will Like about Windows 7 points out a number of features such as the snipping tool, jump lists and snap feature which will be attractive for teachers. You can find out more about Windows 7 from the Microsoft Ireland website. We would like to hear your views and how you get on with Windows 7 in the classroom.