IT'S TIME to love your PC again. Windows 7 is a triumph for Microsoft and sees the world's largest software company back at the top of its game at what is a crucial juncture as Apple and Google snap at its heels. It's easy to damn the new operating system with faint praise – "it's what Vista should have been" – but that far from tells the whole story, writes JOHN COLLINS

Before I'm accused of swallowing Microsoft's marketing message whole, let me say that The Irish Timeswas the first Irish publication to get its hands on a pre-release version of Windows 7. At the end of October last year, we reported: "Microsoft has plenty of work to do, but first impressions are that Windows 7 is a cleaner, more intuitive follow-up to Vista."

The good news is that Microsoft has delivered on that initial promise. The first thing you’ll notice is that the onscreen interface is much sharper, less cluttered and generally requires fewer clicks to achieve common tasks.

The taskbar at the bottom of the screen now shows both open programs and those you have pinned to the taskbar. Pinning regularly used programs is simple, as is removing them.

A number of changes have been made to the way you can manipulate open windows. Quickly pull one to the side of your screen and it will snap to covering half your desktop – great for comparing documents or just working with two programs at once; drag to the top or bottom and it will go full screen.

Hovering the cursor over a program provides a preview or “peek” at the open windows and a jump list allows you to carry out common tasks without actually maximising the program.

It’s only with the latest releases that third-party developers are starting to take advantage of some of these features – eg the latest version of iTunes provides the ability to play or pause music and skip to the next or previous track, all from the preview on the taskbar.

Creating and connecting to networks has been significantly enhanced with the Home Group feature, making it simple to share music, pictures and documents with other PCs in the home. If you use your notebook in the office and at home, Windows 7 will automatically switch key settings, depending on which environment you are in.

A new function called Libraries allows you to group all your files relating to a particular event – or, for instance, your music – in a single virtual folder, even if they are stored in multiple locations.

Vista may have been unloved but it didn’t help things with its constant nagging interruptions to ask you to authorise every slight change to your PC in the interests of security. The number of alerts has been toned down, with many now appearing in the Action Centre on the Taskbar rather than popping up front and centre. Users also have much more granular control over the level of security they wish to deploy.

Although Microsoft still won’t admit it, Vista was a turkey when it first emerged from the labs three years ago. The fact that iPods were being wiped when connected to the first release was symptomatic of the difficulty it had working with third-party devices (this and other major pitfalls were addressed in quickly released updates).

Although the pre-beta that was initially loaded on the Dell XPS laptop I used to test Windows 7 over the last year didn’t recognise Nokia phones and other hardware I threw at it, since the release of the actual beta version earlier this year, it has had no issues picking up third-party devices from mobile broadband dongles to the latest smartphones.

The official system requirements are the same as Vista – a 1Ghz processor and 1GByte of RAM – but even with the minimum spec, Windows 7 will run faster than Vista. Microsoft is clearly aware of the huge netbook market and the fact that many of those uber-light laptops are running XP rather than Vista.

Although Windows 7 will run on much older machines, there is no upgrade path from XP. As such, you’ll have to do a clean install – not something to be taken lightly unless you are fairly technical. Vista users will be able to upgrade directly, keeping their existing programs and settings in the process.

It should be noted, however, that Microsoft has stripped out some of the additional programs that came with Vista, including Windows Mail, Contacts, Photo Gallery and Movie Maker and they will no longer be available after the upgrade.

Instead Microsoft offers a suite called Windows Live Essentials which has some excellent tools for photo editing, mail and contacts management, a development that shows it has not been afraid to learn from more web-focused competitors.

Speaking of the competition, even they seem to be impressed with Windows 7, with both Apple and Google swooping in with major product announcements this week ahead of its formal release.

Unlike Vista, Windows 7 doesn’t just work – it works fast, efficiently and elegantly.