I’ve been using Windows 7 for almost a month and nary a day-to-day problem.  Which sounds like saying “it’s not so bad.”  The truth is much better.  I like it.  It’s the best improvement to the Windows experience since Windows/XP reworked the old Windows 9X series.

I installed it on May 8th when the Windows 7 Release Candidate became available.  It’s installed on my main PC that previously hosted Windows Vista.

Upgrading from a computer running Vista is pretty much a no-brainer since you can actually perform the install as an upgrade.   I’ve also subsequently installed Windows 7 on a computer that previously ran Windows/XP — more of a hassle.

Here’s what I especially like about Windows 7

New Taskbar — to me, this is the most dramatic improvement to usability in Windows 7.  The taskbar shows your running programs and throughout Windows/XP and Vista it has been a cluttered and annoying mess.  The Windows 7 innovations are that you can pin an application to the taskbar so whether it’s running or not, it will be docked there, also documents can be pinned to the taskbar.

When you hover your mouse over a program icon, a thumbnail of the current open pages is displayed.  If you click on the thumbnail a full size preview is peeked.

A right click on the icon shows which documents have been used and which have been pinned.

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Since I use a very predictable set of programs daily, I keep them all pinned to the taskbar along with the associated document with which I’m working.

At the risk of taking sides in the cyberworld’s oldest debate, Mac vs PC,  the Windows 7 task bar reminds me of the OSX Dock — done better.

If you’d like to see more Mac OSX vs. Windows 7 comparisons, check out Gina Trapani’s smackup over at lifehacker for a balanced view.

1-Click Calendar – I find the new 1-click activated calendar to be very convenient for orienting myself for quick scheduling.

Libraries

New in Windows 7 is a meta-grouping of folders called Libraries that can aggregate content from multiple place even over the network thus giving you a more logical view of your data.  I keep MP3s on several different drives and with libraries I can create one grouping making them easier to find and manage.

Overall Speed – Windows 7 seems faster and lighter than Vista, the bloat-meiser.  It seems light enough I plan to install it on my netbook currently running XP and an old laptop.

Conclusion

As I said above, I like it.  I feel it has improved my productivity and even though it’s not the production release, I have had no operational problems with Windows 7.  It’s surprisingly clean.

If you want to give it a try yourself, you can install the free Windows 7 Release Candidate now and use it until March 2010 without buying the production copy when it is released on October 22d.

Good one Microsoft, I didn’t think you had it in you anymore.