Why Windows 7 is better than Vista, part 1

You might have read, heard, or otherwise seen something about Windows 7 in the last few months.  You might have also heard that it’s a much-improved, much more polished version of Vista.  Skeptical?  Don’t be.  In this series, titled Why Windows 7 is better than Vista, I will outline the top five reasons why I love Windows 7, and why you should too.

First up is the shut-down menu.  I think I should let the following screen shots speak for themselves:

Windows 7 shut-down menu

Windows Vista shut-down menu

As you can see, Windows Vista gives the user an entire seven options of how to shut down their machine.  Let’s think about that for a moment.  Seven options.  Plus there were two more buttons to the left of the expanded menu, which were shortcuts to those items in the menu.  Windows 7 does away with two of those options in the expanded menu.  Specifically, the Shut Down and Hibernate functions.  It makes the Shut Down option a button to the left of the menu and combines Hibernate with Sleep.  Should the average user even know the difference between Hibernate and Sleep?  I don’t think so.  I think the PC should go into as low power state as possible when put to “sleep.”  That’s what the Mac does – it goes into a low-power sleep mode and comes back to life instantly upon “waking.”  (It always feels a little eerie when speaking of a computer as if it were human.)

So there you have it, reason #1 why Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista.  Nine more to go – in no particular order.  And for those who have been more or less up in arms about the little Microsoft coverage here at TNR, well, there you are.