Find out more about the right tools and compatible software for Microsoft’s new operating system
WINDOWS 7 is out (launched in Malaysia today), and that means a massive search for Windows 7-compatible software is on.
While Microsoft’s new operating system has received widespread praise for its efforts to remain compatible with the majority of existing applications, incompatibilities do exist, especially in the areas of system security and system maintenance.
Will the tools you have relied upon for years for your Windows XP or Vista systems have trouble under Windows 7 system?
Here are some answers.
Antivirus software
During Windows 7’s lengthy pre-release phase, only a handful of antivirus applications were compatible with the operating system. That has changed, though, with the final release of the operating system.
Currently, most of the major antivirus makers have either updated their existing products or released new versions of their security software to address Windows 7 compatibility.
Depending upon the security software you currently use, you may have to pay an upgrade fee to get the version that has been certified to work properly with Windows 7.
If you don’t like the idea of paying for antivirus software, however, or if you’re running Windows 7 without antivirus software, you should probably give Microsoft’s own Security Essentials (
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials) package a try.
It’s free to registered users of Windows 7 – and earlier versions of Windows – and it generally gets high marks in the areas that matter most to computer users.
Partition Magic
Partition Magic, for those who don’t know, is a program that allows you to create and resize partitions on a hard drive.
It’s a very handy tool if, for example, you want to create a separate partition to hold all of your data files so that they’re not mixed up with operating system and application files.
However, this program cannot be use with Windows 7.
The good news, though, is that there’s a free program that’s just as easy to use as Partition Magic, and it’s free for home use.
Partition Wizard (
http://www.partitionwizard.com) supports both the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and makes resizing partitions the same way as Partition Magic did.
To complete most resizing operations however, you will need to allow the program to reboot your computer. But other than that, it’s pretty much hassle-free.
Customising Windows Explorer
You can spend a good deal of time trying to customise the new Windows Explorer to look and act like the one in XP, but such customisation will only get you so far.
The fact is that Explorer has been revamped in significant ways, and there’s no ‘classic’ Windows Explorer theme or application that will truly approximate the version found in XP.
You may want to look at third-party Windows Explorer replacements, however.
For instance, Directory Opus (
http://www.gpsoft.com.au), widely considered one of the most powerful and customisable Explorer replacements, can be set up to mimic pretty closely the look and feel of the Windows Explorer found in XP.
You can even tell Opus to respond to the same built-in keyboard command – Windows key+E – that traditionally opened Windows Explorer.
Opus also has advanced features, such as directory and file synchronisation, that no version of Windows Explorer contains.
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