Windows 7 Features! Part 2

In my previous post, I showed you how easily it was to install Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system with relative ease. In this follow up post, I will show you some really cool stuff that you are able to do with Windows 7 once you have it installed. Now, the reason you took the time to actually install Windows 7 is mainly so that you can use it and test it out! Don’t be afraid to try new things! With that said, let’s get into it!

When a new operating system arrives, it usually gives you a host of new features that should make your everyday computing tasks that much more easier to complete. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that change can be good. Although a lot of computer users fear the word “change”, it’s time we be more open about how we interact with our computers. Windows 7 will throw some features at you that might seem odd at first, but if you embrace it and have an open mind, you will see that it can be a big benefit.

# Taskbar changes
Perhaps the biggest change you will notice at first is the taskbar. You no longer have the quick launch section that you were so familiar with in XP and Vista. In Windows 7, it seems as if the entire taskbar is the quick launch bar itself! You will notice large textless icons ‘pinned’ to the taskbar. You can think of these icons as shortcuts to your favorite programs. Clicking on them will open the application. Once you launch an application this way, another change becomes apparent. Gone are the taskbar windows you were familiar with in past Microsoft operating systems. Instead, similar windows of the same application will be represented and grouped into by the application’s icon on the taskbar. If you have multiple windows opened within that application, you can simply hover your mouse over the icon and after a quick second, you will be greeted with the Aero ‘Peek’ window that shows you the windows currently opened. You can then use your mouse to select the window you want to work with. You can freely pin items to the taskbar at your leisure. Simply either drag the application shortcut to the taskbar or right click on the application and choose ‘Pin to Taskbar’ option.
Video Demonstration

If you do not wish to use this new feature and want to revert back to what you were used to in XP/Vista, simply right click the taskbar, choose Properties, and next to the Taskbar buttons you’ll want to select ‘Combine when taskbar is full’. Another feature you should notice is that you can now freely rearrange your taskbar items. Simply drag them left or right of other taskbar items to position them. This also works with your system tray icons. If you want this feature in XP/Vista, take a look at Taskbar Shuffle.
As you have probably noticed already, the ‘Show Desktop’ icon is missing! Actually, it’s not but just moved to a different location. If you carefully look next to the time/date section in the lower right hand corner, you will notice a small/slim and clear icon. Simply hovering your mouse over it will quickly hide your opened windows and give you a view of the desktop. Moving the mouse away from the icon will simply show back your windows as it was before. I’m sure you can already guess what happens when you click on the ‘Show Desktop’ button instead.

You will also notice a feature called Jump List. They integrate with your application and allows you to quickly perform common tasks. The software developer for their applications can also integrate their own tasks within the Jump List. To view them, simply right click a taskbar icon and you will see any available tasks associated with that application. For example, in IE8, you can quickly open a InPrivate browser window without having to first open up IE8 first in normal mode.

A very small but awesome feature is the ability to now see the progress bar (when you burn a CD, copying large files to another location) in your application’s icon on the taskbar! That way, you can instantly glance down to the taskbar and know whether or not the task has completed yet.

# Desktop
One especially beloved feature by most users is the ability to create your own themes! It is now possible with Windows 7. You can customize your own batch of wallpapers to be switched at a random interval. Also, did you ever wanted to create your own sound scheme to be used at different times? Well, now you can! Creating your own theme is super easy. While you may initially think of this as a useless feature, I’m sure you will change your mind once you begin implementing it.

Windows 7 includes a very special utility that makes explaining problems your tech support specialist that much more easier. The utility is called the Problem Steps Recorder. This simple tool allows you to recreate your problem while it captures the screenshots as you do so. Once you are done, it will create a small zip file with the pictures inside along with some detail information so that you can then send that file to your tech support staff (or a friend) so that they have a better understanding of your problem! This should be a very useful feature. You’ll want to view this screencast by Microsoft blogger, Keith Combs, if you want to see it in action.

Gadgets are still available in Windows 7 but gone is the blackish sidebar that appeared by default in Windows Vista. Instead, you now simply dock the objects anywhere you want on your desktop. If you choose to have your gadgets line up on the right of your screen (as if the sidebar was still there), you can simply double click on the gadget of choice in the Gadget Gallery window and it will automatically do that for you.

This next Windows 7 feature will benefit you if you have a nice and big widescreen LCD monitor. Simply by dragging one window all the way to the right or left side of the screen will instantly resize that current window to occupy one half of your screen. Drag another window to the opposite side and now the window will again instantly resize itself to occupy the other half of the screen. This allows you to quickly work with two applications side by side. This is really useful for example if you need to write a essay in Microsoft Word while doing the research on Firefox. You can then align Word to the left side of the screen while making Firefox align the the right.
Next, to instantly maximum a Window, you can drag it to the top of your screen instead. If you have dozens of windows open and want to quickly minimize all the unfocused windows, now you can quickly grab the titlebar of the window you want to focus on and give it a quick side to side jerk motion with your mouse. Instantly, all the background windows will be minimized. If you want all the windows to reappear, give it another shake! Finally, to quickly maximize a window to fill the top and bottom of your taskbar, simply either double click when the arrow pointer appears or drag it to the top of your screen. You can view these features in motion from the video I have uploaded.
Video Demonstration

Windows 7 brings a new feature called ‘Libraries’ that makes organizing and finding your data much more easier. Basically, a Library is not necessarily a folder in of itself, but rather a collection of folders grouped together. Each folder’s view can be customized for whatever data content it will hold. By default, Windows 7 has a library created for you which includes the Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders. You can create your own Library to include your own folders as well. For information on how to do that, read this article from My Digital Life.

Last but not least, you have a very handy Sticky Note application! You can easily create simple sticky notes and pin them to your desktop to remind yourself of important events or tasks to complete.

# Windows Media Player enhancements
Windows Media Player (WMP) has been one of my favorite music player for a long time. It’s easy to use, configure, and gets the job done as I all need is for it to organize my library. Windows 7 will ship with WMP 12 and it brings a some very noticeable changes.
First thing you will notice when firing up WMP 12 is that Microsoft stripped away the ‘Now Playing’ view. For the majority of the time, you will be working in the Library view. Microsoft has decided to separate those two views from each other. Don’t worry too much though because WMP 12 function and works pretty much as past WMP releases. When in library mode, it is here that you will get to view your music collection, tag your music, organize them and obviously, play them. You can switch into the Now Playing view to view the playlist, visualizations, cover art of your music and when playing multimedia video files.

When playing movie files, having the right codecs installed could mean whether the video is viewable or not. WMP 12 comes equipped with more video codecs installed by default. For example, it can now play Apple’s Quicktime .MOV files right out of the box. That means you don’t have to install a separate application just to view those files. WMP 12 also includes support for H.264 video (high definition), AAC audio, and both Xvid and DivX video. Also, whatever formats was supported under Vista is also supported here as well. Awesome!
A new feature in WMP 12 gives you the ability to stream content from one Windows 7 computer to another, no matter where they are (as long as both are on and have an Internet connection)! Remote Media Streaming allows you to access your music and movies even when you are on the road. For more information on this topic and to configure this feature, you’ll want to read this TweakWin7 article.

# Security enhancements
There are a couple of notable changes to Windows 7 in the security department. First is that the Autorun feature will be disabled on non-optical devices. These are your USB thumb drives (without the U3 software installed) and external hard drives. The main reason for doing so is that there are many malware that take advantage of the Autorun feature being turned on in previous versions of Windows. The malware would simply run as soon as you plug in your infected USB device. With Windows 7, all non-optical USB devices would only give you one option, and that is to open the folder and view the files inside it. No software is automatically run.

The second notorious change is the behavior of the User Access Control (UAC) feature. One of the major reason why a lot of people were put off with Vista was due to this feature. A lot of users do not realize that UAC is actually a good security feature of the operating system and actually protects them! Its just the way Microsoft implemented it that pissed off a lot of users. The feature gave the user a UAC prompt when attempting to perform the most trivial of tasks like when accessing the Device Manager! With Windows 7, Microsoft gave it a much needed tweak and as a result, it’s less ‘chatty’ than in Vista. As you can see in the picture below, by default, UAC will not bother you should you make Windows system changes but only when installing software.

With USB thumb drives getting smaller and smaller, it comes with the problem of whether you will physically lose them or not! Simply buying a new thumb drive is no problem as they are very cheap but what if you have important and private data on that drive? Can you put a price on that? Although mostly viewed as a business feature, a lot of other users can find a need for encrypting their USB thumb drives. With a new feature in Windows 7 called Bitlocker To Go, you can do just that. In Windows Vista, you were allowed to encrypt your entire hard drive with Bitlocker, thus preventing thieves from tampering with it. With Bitlocker To Go, you can use that same protection on your USB thumb drives. Please view this screencast from Keith Comb to get a better understanding of how it works and for a quick demonstration.

# Windows XP Mode
This feature is available in only Windows 7 Professional versions and up. In a nutshell, Microsoft will give you a Windows XP license for you to install it on your Windows 7 computer as a virtual machine! That’s right folks, you can use both XP and Windows 7 at the same time! This is mainly focused on businesses that need their XP only applications to be also run on Windows 7. Once you have everything set up, you have the ability to fully work in XP as if it was another physical computer. The neat part is that instead of always having to start up the entire XP virtual machine just to work on an application (this was the scenario back then), users can now install the applications inside the XP virtual machine and have access to those same programs within Windows 7! The program obviously is running in the XP environment but it’s secretly doing so in the background and users will probably never notice it!
In the first picture, you can see that I’m running XP in full mode. In the second picture however, I have seamlessly opened Internet Explorer 6 (it’s not possible to downgrade to IE6 in Windows 7) right along with Internet Explorer 8 in my Windows 7 OS. You can also tell that it’s running with XP in the background because it doesn’t have the Aero effect on the window title bars. For more information on this, visit the Microsoft’s Virtual PC homepage.

I want to conclude this post by telling you about the different Windows 7 SKUs, or better known as editions, so you have a better understanding of it when it officially releases. Windows 7 is predicted to hit market shelves and available for PC makers in October 2009. With the release date comes 4 versions of Windows 7 that you can choose from all ranging with different features and of course, different prices. First up is the Home Basic Edition. This edition is meant for the most casual of computer users who just need to browse the Internet, check their email, listen to some music and view photos. Next you have the Home Premium edition. This will most likely be the version that most home users will use as it will be pre-installed on most of the PCs you see in the store. This version will include the popular Windows Media Center and the Remote Media Streaming feature I’ve mentioned earlier plus more. Then you have the Professional edition. This will include everything in both the two lower editions plus the XP Mode. You can also join your computer to a domain. The highest edition is the Ultimate edition. This edition basically has everything plus the ability to use Bitlocker. You can get a glimpse of a chart comparing the features of the different editions from Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows website.

As you can, there are a lot of awesome features included with Windows 7. I’m using the Windows 7 RC on my main laptop and I am simply loving it! Everything works as expected and is much faster in general. If you were put off by Vista, please do not let that prevent you from trying out Windows 7. While there are similarities obviously, it’s just feels so much better and it’s really hard to describe that feeling to others who have never tried it before. So, I urge everyone to download the Windows 7 RC, try it out and see how great a job Microsoft did in developing this excellent operating system for you.