Digital Home Thoughts: Windows 7 Enhancements

I noticed something new after I'd installed Windows 7 on my HP Mini 1000 and was getting it configured for use: I was downloading a large file (a printer driver) using IE8, and simultaneously copying a large file from my Windows Home Server. When I minimized all the windows (Windows Key+D), the icons on the task bar became progress indicators so you can see at a glance how each process is doing. Slick!

One of the other enhancements I'm impressed with is how high-performance the video driver is: the HP Mini 1000 uses the Intel GMA945, which is generally considered to be a near-worthless GPU in terms of performance. After running Windows Update on a fresh install of Windows 7, a pre-release driver update for the GMA945 is provided. And after installing that driver, I was amazed to see how smooth all the animations were in Windows 7. Everything from hovering over the taskbar icons and getting the window preview, to hovering over the desktop shortcut on the far right of the taskbar; it was all very smooth. Surprisingly, even flipping through Widnows Media Center was fast and smooth. I should note that this is without any significant amount of content in it, but the basic UI navigation was very smooth, which is something that surprised me.

Are you using the Windows 7 release candidate? If so, what are some of your favourite features so far? I keep discovering new things the more I use it.