Favorite Windows 7 Feature

Dell recently conducted a poll and they asked their customers, "What's your favorite Windows 7 feature?"

Are you surprised by the results? How would you have answered? Are you familiar with Aero Shake? Here's a description from Microsoft:

Ever need to cut through a cluttered desktop and quickly focus on a single window? Just click a pane and give your mouse a shake. Voila! Every open window except that one instantly disappears. Jiggle again—and your windows are back. (Who says the old mouse can’t learn a new trick?)

Personally, my favorite features is Snap:

Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen.

Depending on where you drag a window, you can make it expand vertically, take up the entire screen, or appear side-by-side with another window. Snap makes reading, organizing, and comparing windows a...well, you get the picture.

With Snap, you can also do the following:

• Arrange windows side by side on the desktop using Snap
• Maximize windows using Snap
• Expand windows vertically on the desktop using Snap

Some of my favorite Windows 7 features

Let me highlight a few of my favorite Windows 7 features. Let me start by explaining that I usually work with two monitors side-by-side when I'm in the office. However, when I'm on the road, I only have a single monitor (which is my laptop screen). How can I get two windows perfectly aligned side-by-side?

• In Windows 7, dragging a window to the right or left edge of your screen resizes the windows so that you can effectively work with two windows side-by-side. (dragging a window to the top edge of the screen maximizes that window)
  
• Preview and close your windows using Aero Peek. In Vista, you can preview, but you can't close your windows using Aero Peek. In Windows 7, you can close those windows. If you hover your mouse over the taskbar, you'll see a few preview windows pop up that show you miniature views of your windows. If you move your mouse into one of these windows, you'll see a tiny red "X" appear at the upper right corner of that mini window. You can effectively close your windows using this feature within Aero Peek.
• When you have multiple applications and windows open, you can rearrange the order of those apps within your taskbar. In the past, the first application you open would be on the far left. Then, the next app would appear to the right of the first one. 

Now, are these features enough to persuade people to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7? Probably not. However, the performance improvement should be the biggest driver for people who are not satisfied with the sluggish performance of Vista.