Sponsor Spotlight: How Windows 7 Delivers
Microsoft® Windows 7® is here, and it’ll help make you a more productive designer. How? By making everything you do easier, more intuitive, and more effective.
Smaller OS footprint
One of the more significant improvements in Windows 7 is that Microsoft’s developers seem to have streamlined the underlying code of the operating system. Windows 7 installs faster and takes up less hard drive space and fewer resources, allowing it to be installed on minimal hardware like netbooks. While this isn’t that important to engineers, designers, architects and other core Autodesk users who use heavier duty hardware, it is a big advantage to mobile users, leaving more of the critical resources required by resource intensive applications like Autodesk Inventor and Revit for user files and processes. Streamlined code also tends to be more stable over the long haul, boosting reliability and efficiency over the lifecycle of the solution.
Superior manageability
Windows 7 features a range of manageability improvements that improve user productivity simply by making the workstation, desktop or notebook easier to live with, and makes them easier for the enterprise to manage.
The Problem Steps Recorder (PSR), for instance, allows users to capture the steps they take while troubleshooting a problem, simply by turning on the PSR function. The steps are recorded as screen captures in a MHTML page enabling the information to be accurately related to service technicians and speeding up problem resolution.
The Windows Action Center unifies security and maintenance functionality, including a variety of alerts, under a common applet, where previously they were managed under two or more applets. Additionally, this applet allows you to turn on and off alerts that you don’t need, such as an alert for anti-virus software if Windows doesn’t happen to recognize the software you run. Don’t want to hear the alert, just shut it off. Again, the benefit is great efficiency, liveability, and a more intuitive user experience.
Windows Troubleshooting is a new Windows 7 feature that diagnoses and resolves common operating system and hardware issues. It works automatically, and is integrated with the Windows Action Center so you'll be notified of problems as well as new solutions from Microsoft and third-party suppliers as they become available.
Biometric device management, previously handled by third-party applets, is now managed natively within Windows 7, reducing the potential for conflicts from sub-standard third party code and providing a more familiar, and thus more efficient interface.
For engineers and designers, display performance, color calibration and support for the latest display technologies is critical. Windows 7 offers a variety of improvements here as well, including integrated display color calibration, improved high DPI support, ClearType, and improved support for external displays. Users who rely on multiple displays will find a new Windows Key + P keyboard shortcut helpful in switching between connected displays.
Other improvements include DirectAccess, mobile users can simply and more securely access corporate resources when out of the office; and a new PowerConfig utility that monitors power usage and reports on issues that may be negatively impacting your computer’s energy efficiency.
So if you’ve been waiting to upgrade from Microsoft Windows XP, now is the time. Windows 7 is a clear improvement in all respects, providing a more stable, more efficient and more intuitive user environment that will help you be more productive and more competitive. Microsoft Windows 7 ships standard on all HP Workstations, notebooks and desktops, and allows you to take full advantage of the latest technologies incorporated into the HP Z-series workstations.
For more information on HP Workstations with Microsoft Windows 7, click here.
