WINDOW 7

Windows 7 compatible games list (32/64)

2009-10-22T10:22:00.001-07:00

Age of Conan
Audiosurf
Bioshock
Brothers in Arms - Hell's Highway
Burnout Paradise Ultimate
CMR DIRT
Call Of Duty (World At War)
Call Of Duty 4
Call of Juarez DX10 Benchmark
Command and Conquer 3 Kane's Wrath
Command and Conquer Generals/Zero Hour
Counter Strike: Source
Cryostasis
Crysis 32bit
Crysis Warhead 32/64bit
Crysis Wars 32/64bit
DeadSpace
Dawn of War 2 Multiplayer Beta
Devil May Cry 3
Devil May Cry 4
Diablo 2/w mods
Doom 3 1.3.1 (works 2000comp mode)
Dreadnought 64bit demo - works, "paintball" must be selected.
Eve Online
Exodus from the Earth
F.E.A.R
F.E.A.R 2
Guild Wars
GRID
Hawx
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 Death-Match 64bit
Heroes 3
Left 4 Dead
Lost Planet Colonies DX10
NecroVision demo DX10
Medal Of Honour: Pacific Assault
Might and Magic 6
Might and Magic 7
Mass Effect
Mirrors Edge
Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights - Mask Of The Betrayer/Storm Of Zehir
NFS Carbon
NFS Most Wanted
NFS Undercover
PES 2009
Prey
Prince Of Persia
PT Boats Knights of the Sea DX10 Benchmark
Quake 3
Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
Red Alert 3
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Rise of the Argonauts
Sacred 2
Silent Hill 5
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow Of Chernobyl
Starcraft Brood War
Super Mario Forever
Test Drive Unlimited
The Last Remnant Benchmark
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Tomb Raider - Underworld
Unreal Tournament 436 GOTY (98/me compmode)
UT 2004
Unreal Tournament 2
Unreal Tournament 3
World of Goo
World of Warcraft

Technorati Tags: window 7,live,games

Windows 7 compatible software list (32/64)

2009-10-22T10:21:00.001-07:00

Programs

3DMark 05
3Ds Max
7-Zip
A-squared
A4 TECH camera
AIM
AIM 6.8 (32)
AMD Fusion For Gaming 1.0
AOD (AMD OverDrive)
ATF Cleaner
ATI CCC 8.11 Vista64
ATI Catalyst™ Beta Driver Package
AVG 8.5
AVG Internet Security
Ad-Aware
Adobe Audition 3
Adobe CS3 Master Collection
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
Adobe Photoshop CS4
Adobe Reader 9
Advanced System Care 3 Pro
Alcohol
Asus AI Booster
Asus Software Suite
Asus Xonar Drivers and Control panel
Autoruns
Avast Anti virus
Avast Internet Security
Avira AntiVir
BHODaemon
Bit Lord
Bit Torrent
CCleaner
CCleaner
CPU-Z
CPUz
Cakewalk Sonar 8 producer edition
CircleDock (.92 A8)
Combined Community Codec Pack
Comodo Firewall Pro
CoreTemp
Creative Gameport
Creative Mediasource 5
CuteFTP 8.2
Daemon Tools
DamnNFO Viewer
Download Accelerator Plus 9.1
Driver Cleaner.net 3.2
Driver Sweeper
EarthDesk
EasyBCD
Everest
Everest Ultimate
Everest ultimate 4.6
F-Prot anti-virus
FFdShow Tryouts x64
FileZilla
Firefox
Fl Studio
Flashget 1.9.6
Foxit Reader
Fraps
GPUz
Google Earth
Google Talk
Guitar Rig 3.2 (32bit)
HDDLife Pro
HDTune
Hardware Monitor
HijackThis
ImgBurn
Itunes
K-lite 445
Kaspersky Antivirus 8 8.0.0.1015 (win 7 beta version)
Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 (8.0.506)
K lite codec pack
Logitech's GamePanel Software 3.01.180(x86)
Logitech G-series Key Profiler
Logitech SetPoint 4.70 (32/64bit)
Malwarebytes
MaxPi
Memset
Microsoft Office 07
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
MobilEdit! 3.0.0.38
Mozilla
NForce 15.23
Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3.1 and 3.2
Native Instruments Kontakt 3
Nero 9
Nod32 SS 3.0.667
Nod32 v2.7
Norton Internet Security 2009
Norton internet security
Notepad++
Nvidia 181.20
Nvidia 181.22
Nvidia WDDM 1.1 Driver
OCCT
Open office 3.1
Orthos StressPrime
PerfectDisk 10
PhysX 9.09
Pidgin (IM client)
PowerDVD 8
Power ISO
Power Tab Software
Power iso 4.2
Procmon
RAS Plus
Reaper 2.54
RivaTuner v2.22
Riva tuner
Rivatuner 2.24,
Sonar 6 Producer Edition patched to 6.2(32bit)
Sony E.r.i.c.s.s.o.n Software Suit
Sony Sound Forge
Speedfan
Speedfan 4.3
Spybot – Search & Destroy
Spybot S&D
Steam
SuperPi
TVersity
Teamspeak
Thunderbird (2.0.0.16)
UltraVNC (1.51)
Utorrent
VLC Player
Ventrilo
Virtual Clone Drive
Virtual Earth
VistaCodecs 5.0.9
WinRAR
Winamp 5.54
Windows Home Server
Windows Live 8/BETA
Windows Media Center
Windows Media Player
Winrar 3.71
WorldWide Telescope
X-mouse button control
Xbox 360 Gamepad
Xfire
Yahoo Widgets

Technorati Tags: software

How to Customize or Disable Windows 7’s Action Center

2009-10-21T17:34:00.001-07:00

Windows 7’s Action Center does a great job of compressing all of Windows’ update/alert/whatever notifications into one icon, but it takes some tweaking to make it show what you want, or disable it entirely.At the How-To Geek’s home away from Lifehacker, his partner in serious Windows customization, Mysticgeek, details the process of defining exactly which kind of system message get displayed through the Action Center’s little white flag icon. It’s all done through the Control Panel and right-click options, no registry hacking required, but the process might not be apparent to Windows 7 newcomers. And for those who don’t want their system to bother them at all, there’s a simple fix for disabling the Action Center for real. Hit the link for a walkthrough full of explanatory screenshots.

Technorati Tags: window7,tweak

How to Unlock the Windows 7 Hidden Themes

2009-10-21T17:32:00.001-07:00

The Windows 7 beta has a pack of hidden and locked themes. To unlock hidden themes do the following:
Step 1: Open the Explorer (Windows + E) and go to C:Windowswinsxs
Step 2: Enter *.theme into the search field. Alternately you can use the * sign on the number block.
Step 3: You’ll get the Click me prompt
Step 4: Double-click the themes ZA, US, GB, CA, AU to install them.

Technorati Tags: window7,tweak

Edit hosts file in Windows 7 & Windows Vista

2009-10-21T17:31:00.001-07:00

his may sound silly suggestion to even post on Windows Reference but will help avoid some annoyance with Windows Vista and Windows 7. The host file is the one where one enters hostname and IP Address pair manually as against being served by a Name server (ex: DNS). As always the “host” file is under C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ or %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\ and hence cannot be edited by normal users.

To edit the host file,

Click Start – search for “Notepad“, right-click and select “Run as Administrator“. This should launch notepad with elevated privileges. Now, open the host file from the File menu, edit and save.

How to Enable the Quick Launch Bar in Windows 7

2009-10-21T17:29:00.001-07:00

It is a surprising to see that the Quick Launch Bar has not been enlisted in the easy to enable list. Here’s what you gotta to do to enable the Quick Launch Bar.
Step 1:Right-click on the Taskbar and select Toolbars > New Toolbar from the menu.
Step 2: Copy and paste the address provided below into the Address bar ‘%SystemDrive%Users%username%AppDataRoamingMicrosoftInternet Explorer‘ then click the arrow to the right of the Address bar to navigate to the folder.
Step 3: Select the Quick Launch folder listed and click the Select Folder button

Technorati Tags: window7,tweak,vista,osX

How to Change Windows 7 Log On Screen

2009-10-21T17:28:00.001-07:00

If you don’t want the same old blue log on screen for your Windows Vista, here’s what you gotta do. Go ahead with the steps below. (An alternative way can be found here: Windows 7 Logon Changer)
Step 1: Download the file – http://www.mediafire.com/?e9y3j3vme0w
Step 2: Click on Save and save the .zip file to the desktop
Step 3: Open the .zip file and extract the .reg file to the desktop
Step 4: Right click the .reg file (On Desktop) and click on Merge.
Step 5: Click on Run, and press Yes, Yes, and OK when prompted
Step 6: Save the custom .jpg image you want to use to the desktop with the name backgroundDefault.jpg
Step 7: Check to see what your primary display screen resolution is. (You can do it by right clicking on any empty space on your desktop and choose screen resolution and then actuate it with your monitor’s specification.)
Step 8: Open Paint, and click on the File icon (top left corner), Open, and navigate to and select the .jpg image from step 6. [NOTE: You can open Paint by typing mspaint.exe in the Start menu search line]
Step 9: In Paint, click on Resize, dot Pixels, uncheck Maintain aspect ratio, then resize the .jpg image to the screen resolution size in step 7 (whatever be yours)
Step 10:Save the .jpg file to the desktop with the exact file name below with the screen resolution size of the image. When completed, close Paint
Step 11: In Windows Explorer, navigate to C:Windowssystem32oobeinfobackgrounds
Step 12: Copy and Paste the .jpg files from step 10, and from step 6 into the C:Windowssystem32oobeinfobackgrounds folder, then close the window
Step 13: You’re logon screen is now changed. You can press Ctrl+Alt+Del to test it. Click on Cancel to return to the desktop.

Some Changes Since window 7 Beta for the RC

2009-10-21T17:27:00.001-07:00

We’ve been quite busy for the past two months or so working through all the feedback we’ve received on Windows 7. It should be no surprise but the Release Candidate for Windows 7 will have quite a few changes, many under the hood so to speak but also many visible. Some have asked if the featureset is "frozen" then what will we change--we change a lot of things in the beta based on feedback and we try to do so in a systematic manner with the focus on the goals for the release. The goal of having a fully functional Beta was to make sure we received reliable feedback and not a lot of "hey this doesn't work at all" sorts of reports. This has allowed us to really focus on delivering a refined RC where the changes we made are all the reflection of feedback we have received.

Building on the previous post that looked at the broad view of feedback, we want to start posting on the feedback and the engineering actions we’ve taken in responding to the feedback. We won’t be able to cover all the changes (as we’re still busy making them), but for today we wanted to start with a sampling of some of the more visible changes. We’re still on the same path working towards the release candidate and of course we know everyone is anxious for the next phase of our path to RTM. In the meantime, our full time machines are still running the Beta build.

Today’s post is from Chaitanya, who has previously posted on some of the core user interface work. --Steven

This blog post talks about a few of the improvements that will be in our Release Candidate (RC) based upon customer feedback. There are many under the hood changes (bug fixes, compatibility fixes, performance improvements, and improvements) across the entire dev team that we just don’t have room to discuss here, but we thought you’d enjoy a taste of some changes made by three of our feature teams: Core User Experience, Find & Organize and Devices & Media. The comments in this article come from a variety of verbatim sources, with identifying information withheld.

Desktop Experience

1. Windows Flip (ALT + TAB) with Aero Peek

We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback about Aero Peek and how it helps customers switch windows with increased confidence. Daniel wrote to tell us “I’m wondering why Peek was never implemented for the ALT + TAB window. The thumbnails look/behave the same way as the taskbar thumbnails when you hover the mouse over them. It seems logical that they would exhibit the peek behavior, too”. We decided to make this change since we heard many requests for it. One can still quickly flip between and cycle through running windows using the ALT+TAB keys, but when more window information is needed Aero Peek will appear. This is triggered by a time delay as you pause while keyboarding through running windows.

Fig 1.

Aero Peek triggered from Windows Flip (ALT+TAB)

2. Windows Logo + <#> keyboard shortcut

Enthusiasts often ask us for more keyboard shortcuts to simplify their common tasks. Efficiency is key. We’ve answered with a very powerful new keyboard shortcut for the taskbar that may just alienate mice everywhere. Pressing Windows Logo + <#> (where <#> corresponds to an item’s order in Quick Launch) in Vista would simply launch the item. As part of our unification of Quick Launch with the taskband in Windows 7, we now beef up the shortcut so it can both launch and switch. For example, if IE wasn’t running in Fig 1 then Windows Logo + 2 will launch the program (as it did in Vista). If IE is running with a single window, the same shortcut will now switch to the program. The magic really begins when IE is running with several windows or tabs—holding down the Windows Logo and tapping the 2 key repeatedly will actually cycle through the open IE items off the taskbar (with Aero Peek, of course). Letting go simply switches to the corresponding window. Think of this as per-program ALT +TAB shortcut for the first 10 items on the taskbar. If you need a new instance for IE, simply use SHIFT + Windows Logo + <#>. A program’s Jump List may also be accessed via ALT+ Windows Logo + <#>. Finally, you can even flip back to the last active window of a program by using CTRL+ Windows Logo + <#> (this also works by holding CTRL with a mouse click on a taskbar button). Keyboard aficionados rejoice!

3. Needy State

“Needy window” is the internal term we use for a window that requires your attention. Since the ‘90s, the taskbar has always provided some type of visualization to alert the customer to this state such as by flashing the button. A careful balance must be struck between providing information and not irritating the customer. With the new taskbar, we received feedback that Outlook reminders or a Messenger chat sometimes went unnoticed because needy windows were too subtle. For example, Mudassir opened a bug to say “The flashing is not obvious enough to get user's attention. Sometime I don't even notice it. It flashes for a little bit and then stops. If I am away the icon flashes and stops before I come back. The icon is not noticeable.” We’ve made three changes that should address the issue. First, we changed the flashing animation curve to make it more noticeable (from a sine to a sawtooth wave). Second, we used a bolder orange color. Finally, we wanted to double the number of flashes which is currently set to three. As a nod to Windows 7, we decided to go with seven flashes instead.

4. Taskbar “Open With”

Quick Launch always supported the ability to drop a file onto a pinned program and have it open with that program. The new taskbar on the other hand, always treats a drop as a pin command. Drop a program and the program is pinned. Drop a file and the file will be pinned under its respective program’s Jump List and that program automatically gets pinned to the taskbar. It was important for us to keep drag/drop consistent. We believe that for most cases people will open files through the desktop by just double-clicking them or from the Jump List and the default program will open. However, there are some scenarios when a customer wants to open a certain file type with another program. We heard this feedback and decided to revive “Open With” drag/drop on the taskbar with a keyboard modifier. One can hold down SHIFT and drop the file on the desired program.

5. Taskbar scaling

We’ve reclaimed lots of space on the taskbar by unifying launching/switching, by collapsing open windows and by cleaning the notification area. Still, some have asked for even more room to pin the programs they use regularly. We’ve made a change to squeeze in 24-39% more icons before the taskbar scrolls; depending upon your resolution, icon size and assuming the default notification area. Table 1 illustrates the new button capacity before the taskbar begins to scroll as well as the capacity growth since Beta. We believe customers will find more than enough room to pin their common programs.

6. Anchoring taskbar thumbnails

Hovering or clicking on a taskbar button surfaces all the running windows for that program. Upon seeing a set of open thumbnails, Kozlow asked “How do I know which application has opened the thumbnails group?” In other words, the thumbnails didn’t appear visually connected to the taskbar. We made a visual update that now keeps the color hot-track effect on when the mouse is over a thumbnail. In fig 2 you can see that IE retains its blue Color Hot-track visual even though the mouse is over a thumbnail.

Fig 2.

Color Hot-track stays active when the mouse hovers over taskbar thumbnails

7. Newly installed programs

“Customer in control” is so strong a mantra for Windows 7 we don’t even allow programs to pin themselves to the taskbar when they are installed. This is a task expressly reserved for the customer. We’ve gotten some requests to make this goal a bit easier so now when a program is installed, it is automatically and temporarily surfaced at the bottom of the Start Menu. The customer can easily discover this new addition, launch it directly and optionally drag it to the taskbar for convenient access in the future.

8. Jump List length

Jump Lists are proving to be a valuable tool to quickly jump to commonly access files, folders, links and tasks. Steve filed a bug in which he said “The whole point of the jump list is to make it easier to jump to your favorite locations. However, it doesn't save me time having to scan through a long list of frequent locations.” In other words, sometimes it’s hard to parse an item when the list gets too long. Our telemetry data informs us that in most cases customers are clicking on the first 10 items. Therefore, we’ve updated Jump Lists so that only a maximum of 10 items may be automatically suggested (this doesn’t apply to tasks or pinned items). Don’t worry—there’s even a setting for enthusiasts to customize the length of the list.

9. Increased pinning flexibility with Jump List

For organizational, scaling and identification purposes, the taskbar is designed to hold files, folders and links in a program’s Jump List. Items can only be pinned to the Jump List of programs registered to handle that file type. Based on feedback we’ve received we now allow one to pin items to a Jump List belonging to a program that isn’t registered to handle that file type. Better yet, pinning the item in most cases will create a new registration so that launching it from the Jump List will always open the file with that specific program. For example, one can pin an .HTML file to Notepad’s Jump List and when clicked on from the menu, the file will always open in Notepad even though IE by default handles the file type.

10. Desktop icon and gadget view options

Windows 7 makes gadgets far easier to manage, view and access by building them directly into the desktop. David’s feedback matches what others were telling us: “In Vista, I was able to hide desktop icons while my gadgets were still visible and available. I liked this feature in Vista, especially with all the icons that are constantly dropped on the desktop by app installers. I don't want to see the icons, but I still want to see my gadgets.” In Beta it was impossible to separate desktop icons from gadgets under the View setting available by right-clicking on the desktop. We made a change to afford independent control to each so that one can opt to hide just her gadgets or just her desktop icons.

Touch

11. Aero Peek for touch

We’re excited about Peek and we further refined its functionality. Our touch customers enjoy the benefits of direct manipulation, but inform us they feel left out of some of new functionality that’s available for the mouse and keyboard. We’ve made two improvements that spreads the love. First, the taskbar’s thumbnails now support a touch gesture so one can drag her finger across the UI and trigger Aero Peek. Also, the Show Desktop button is improved so a press-and-hold will allow the customer to peek at the desktop. A regular tap in both these scenarios still to commits the switch.

12. Multi-touch touch keyboard

A funny thing happens when one uses touch to interact with a software keyboard for the first time. The natural instinct is to press multiple buttons simultaneously like they do with a real keyboard. It’s quite reasonable to try to use SHIFT + <letter> to capitalize, for example. RC ushers in multi-touch support for the Touch Keyboard so that customers enjoy a more realistic experience.

13. Multi-touch right-click

People who are rely on touch give us mixed feelings towards tap and hold to bring up a context menu. This approach works, but it also involves a slight delay. We now have a fast new multi-touch gesture for right-click. Simply touch an item with one finger and use another finger to tap and summon a context menu.

14. Drag/Drop and selection

In Beta there was no discoverable way to select text in a website that scrolled both horizontally and vertically. Customers are now able to drag/drop and select items with touch, even inside scrolling pages. The new behavior is optimized for the two most common actions by touch customers—scrolling up and down and dragging left to right.

Networking

15. Internet access feedback

The new network experience from the taskbar’s notification area makes it much easier to find and connect to networks. People seem to also really like the wireless signal strength that is available at a glance. In our effort to simplify the experience we removed indications for some advanced scenarios. Based upon feedback, we’ve decided to introduce a new overlay icon which now reveals when there is a local connection without internet access.

Control Panel

16. User Account Control

If you’ve been following this blog, then you already know about a recent design change we’ve made that will prompt for any modification made to the UAC Control Panel. For more information, please refer to the earlier post on UAC Feedback and Follow-Up.

17. Locking a machine without a screensaver

It isn’t uncommon for IT administrators to want their corporate machines to auto-lock after a certain amount of time. In Beta, enabling this functionality required a screensaver to be set. We’ve since made a change to allow this functionality even when no screensaver is specified.

18. Faster access to High Performance power plan

Clicking on the battery flout from the taskbar notification area offers two different power plans: Balanced and Power saver. Windows 7 laptops are configured by default to use the Balanced plan since this setting best balances a good experience while promoting more environmentally friendly power use. However, some customers tell us they want to be able to quickly toggle between Balanced and High Performance (yet another power plan). We’ve taken a change to now show the latter in the flyout menu when it is enabled under the Power Options Control Panel.

19. Custom theme improvements

We’ve always known customers love personalizing their Windows experience. At the center of this expression of individuality are ingredients such as the desktop background, glass color, sounds and screensavers. In Windows 7 we’ve introduced themes that make it easy to enable a whole package of default combinations or for customers to save their own creations. However, during Beta we heard feedback along the lines of “I just changed my background or color and I see the change, but I thought it was saved when it really wasn’t”. We added text under each theme to not only aid in identification, but also to provide feedback on the state of a theme. The new “Unsaved Theme” text also ties better to the nearby “Save theme” command. These tweaks should make personalization a more predictable and enjoyable experience.

Windows Media Player

20. Improved Internet Radio playback

Internet radio playback continues to gain in popularity. We received feedback that sometimes playback of radio streams may be inconsistent depending on network conditions. It’s worth noting that our understanding of this issue was greatly helped by the broad scale of usage across so many customers and network topologies and our telemetry in the Beta. Windows Media Player has made changes to make streaming playback more reliable and resilient.

21. Improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras

Customers loved the increased range of formats natively supported by the Windows 7 Beta, but noticed areas where they wanted broader support. For example, one was unable to seek to a specific spot in the video in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center for AVCHD content that was imported from a digital camcorder. We’ve addressed this. Also, while the support for video from some digital cameras worked great, we also got feedback about supporting a broader set of devices out of the box. We’ve since added support for Windows Media Player to natively support the .MOV files used to capture video for many common digital cameras.

22. Cleaner Now Playing view

Customers are sharing positive reviews of Media Player’s new light-weight Now Playing view. Still some have asked to make the experience even cleaner. We’ve responded with a visual update that is more lightweight and compact.

23. Filtering content that cannot be played

Media Player’s library view is designed to surface and showcase one’s content. However, in some cases items were displayed that couldn’t be played. For example, Apple’s lossless .M4A or .H263 MPEG-4 content would be shown in a library even though Media Player could not play them. In RC, this content will no longer appear in the library view so that there is better expectation of what is supported by the player.

24. Resume from sleep

Customers are used to resuming a CD or DVD after an interruption. With customers choosing new low-cost, smaller form-factor, machines without optical drives, an increasingly popular scenario is to have content played directly from the hard drive. In Beta, it was not possible to resume playback on such content after a laptop goes to sleep. Customers assume the experience should match that of physical media so we fixed the experience to meet this expectation.

25. Quieting Windows Media Player sync relationships

When Media Player is open and a portable media player or a USB drive is inserted, we trigger a dialog to determine whether a sync relationship should be created with the new device. Our original goal was to be proactive and help customers make a decision in context, but we received comments that this experience is jarring. As a result, we will no longer interrupt when the player is running. This is consistent with our “customer in control” goal of Windows 7 and we trust people can manually configure this should they wish to.

26. Easier access to advanced settings

What enthusiast doesn’t want to tweak her player settings? This was echoed by several comments so we’ve made it easier to access and adjust settings. The equalizer, play speed, SRS WOW and other options are now surfaced via the Now Playing context menu under Enhancements.

27. Jump List improvement

Media Player’s Jump List provides quick access to the content customers consume. The list becomes even more powerful and complete in the RC now that we also include items launched from Explorer.

Device Stage

28. Enriching the Device Stage ecosystem

Customers have been so positive about the new Device Stage experience, one of the biggest pieces of feedback we got was “Why aren’t even more of my devices supported?” We’ve taken that feedback to heart and then took the feedback to our IHV and OEM partners to get their support for more devices. Our hardware partners in turn asked us to make it easier to integrate with the Device Stage and we worked with them on improvements. Although Windows already supports tens of thousands of devices, customer feedback on the Beta introduces even more device support in RC via the new Device Stage experience.

Sound UX

29. Improving the headphone experience

Customers informed us that sometimes their audio streams did not properly move from the default speakers to their headphones. The fix required an update to the algorithm we use to detect new devices. In RC the transition works more reliably.

30. Increased audio reliability

In some cases people reported not having any audio device after installing Beta. The problem is that some audio hardware does not work out of the box with our inbox audio class driver. Amazingly there are over 26,000 custom audio drivers and while many are on Windows Update, many are still not. The Release Candidate tightens the Windows Logo test to better ensure clean install delivers baseline functionality for speakers and microphones. Furthermore, we will continue to populate Windows Update with frequently needed drivers.

Windows Explorer and Libraries

31. Improved header

It is great to see customers realize the convenience and power of libraries. Having files aggregated into one convenient view, without worrying where they are all physically located, simplifies many scenarios. The library header in Beta showed only a static string that reflected how many locations were represented as part of the library. We heard feedback that this wasn’t very clear and more importantly, customers preferred to have more information so that they could be better orientated themselves. The RC will introduce a new header that updates to reveal the subfolder as one browses a library. Furthermore, the “Arrange by” views are better expose in the upper right, in proximity of the other view and search controls.

32. Reduced confusion with drag/drop

The Release Candidate will remove the ability to drag/drop a folder into the Libraries node in the Explorer navigation pane. We know some liked this functionality to create a new library, but it also presented some serious design issues. For example, some were surprised to find a new library was created when their intent was to simply copy the folder. More seriously though, there were circumstances where people then deleted the original folder thinking it was already copied. Data loss is a grave concern of ours and we don’t want customers to suffer from such a mistake. Don’t worry though—one can still easily create a new library using the “New Library” or “Include in Library” commands in the Explorer command bar.

33. Reviving familiar entry points

Mando writes, “In Win7 the Win+E shortcut opens an explorer window but the path is “Libraries” instead (which isn’t where I want to go most of the time). Is there a way to configure the target folder of “Win+E” or is there an alternate shortcut that will get me to the “Computer” path like it did in Vista?” RC reverts the behavior and now the shortcut will launch the “Computer” Explorer. Also, we changed the link in Start Menu -> Username to match the Vista behavior.

34. FAT32 support

Local FAT32 hard disk drives were not support in libraries for Beta. RC libraries will now support non-removable FAT32 and NTFS hard disk drives thanks to the feedback we received.

35. Arrangement view enhancements

It’s been great to see people’s reaction to the arrangement views in libraries. Being able to browse using metadata certainly makes quick work of finding files. We’ve received many requests to further enhance the arrangement views in a variety of ways and we’ve made a number of changes in response to them. For starters, RC makes it easier to switch arrangement views—one can now do so directly from the view context menu, which is the familiar home of switching the view mode, sorting, and grouping. Second, the specific arrangement views themselves have been enhanced for RC. The “Month” and “Day” views in the Pictures library now group together both the pictures and videos taken on the same date, whereas previously the videos were split out into a separate group. The “Artist” and “Genre” views in the Music library now show the thumbnails for up to three unique albums per artist or genre instead of typically just one in Beta. The Videos library now features a Length view that lets customers split out the shorter clips from longer movies in their video collection. Finally, we’ve made it so that changing the grouping of the Folder view in a library is now remembered just like other arrangement view customization. People who prefer to see their files grouped a particular way no longer have to reset the grouping each time.

Performance

36. Improving performance through data

Feedback comes to us in many different forms. Typically it consists of comments customers share. However, some of the most valuable information actually comes to us automatically when people just use Windows. PerfTrack, for example, is a telemetry system that provides us with invaluable real-world performance data on over 500 different Windows scenarios. The exciting aspect of PerfTrack is that it represents what people are really experiencing “out in the wild”. Performance is a very important to both the engineering team as well as to our customers and we strive to continuously improve this area. The topic has been discussed in several posts on this blog.

Let’s look at just one example of a Windows scenario that was improved with the help of PerfTrack. The two graphs below show the performance of opening the Start Menu for both Beta and for a more recent version of Windows 7. Some caveats first—the sample sizes are different (after all Beta did go to a far wider audience) and these numbers shouldn’t be taken too literally since they really do just represent a snapshot. The different colors denote performance against the “interaction class”—the acceptable experience range defined by each feature team. In this case we want the Start Menu to appear within 50ms to 100ms. A trace capturing tool running on each machine lets us investigate and fix what may be impacting performance. The charts shows in Beta 85% of interactions were within the acceptable range (i.e. green or yellow, but not red). After examining the traces and making some optimizations, we find 92% of interactions are this range for a more recent build.

Fig 3.

Start Menu Open Times for Windows 7 Build 7000 (Beta)

Fig 4.

Start Menu Open Times for Windows 7 Build 7033

As is evident from this sample of changes, we’ve been very busy improving Windows 7 based upon what our customers are telling us in many forums.

Technorati Tags: window7 VERSUS,live,bing,window,technology,wallpaper,xp

Windows calendar

2009-10-21T16:53:00.001-07:00

The calendar service is available through the Windows Live free download.

We hope this assists you in the information you are looking for and we hope you enjoy Windows 7 and Windows live as well.

Technorati Tags: WINDOW 7,LIVE,WINDOW

Windows 7 versus Mac OS Operating System War

2009-10-21T16:46:00.001-07:00

Like the new Snow Leopard operating system released in August by Microsoft's archrival, Apple, Windows 7 is much more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary product.

These were the lines from Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg. The final countdown for Microsoft's Windows 7 release has started ticking as the Redmond giant prepares to regain its stronghold over the operating system arena after Visaster. Windows 7 was mainly aimed at a fixing the hassles with bug prone Vista and is increasingly based on customer feedback. However, packed with

sophisticated features and tweaks the new operating system owns some impressive features to take on its rival Operating Systems. Well, we all know Windows versus Mac is a worn out issue afterall, but the arrival of Windows 7 paves the way for new cotton-pickings. With no singular opinion over which OS wins the game - Mac or PC, there's much to be said and done. After picking up the cons with Windows 7, we decided to go for a comparison - Windows 7 versus Mac OS X.
Starting from the scratch

What do find when immediately after starting with Windows 7 and Mac OS X? Mac offers you instant access to your drives and application while Windows 7 starts up with almost nothing handy. That means in Windows 7 you need to make great effort to get going.
Better windows management

Mac has the Dock and Windows offers the taskbar. Click and hold the Dock icon for any open application to view all open windows for that application. Unlike the previous version of OS X, in Snow Leopard the windows are now represented by a thumbnail in Expose. Windows 7 allows you to mouse over an app to get a series of small thumbnails. It also offers a full screen visualization.
Explorer versus Finder

The default interface for dealing with files for both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Leopard are strikingly similar. Both Finder and Windows Explorer are located on the upper-right corner and offer pretty much the same features except a like Finder's Sidebar and Places, and the Windows 7's Libraries. Well, it's a tie.
Quick Look wins over Windows file preview

Finder's provides an exceptionally handy option for Leopard. Select a file, tap the keyboard and bang you can access the contents of any file - Word document, PDF, or image. Windows 7 has an equally handy finder in Alt+P keyboard combination to preview the contents of a file in an embedded panel inside the Explorer interface. However, the preview feature in Windows 7 doesn't support as many filetypes as Quick Look and lacks Quick Look's facilities of separate window resizing and paging capabilities.

Apart from Quick Look and Cover Flow Snow Leopard adds inline preview to the Finder’s icon view. Viewing folders using 64-by-64 pixel icons or larger, mousing over your files will display preview and playback controls. In case you mouse over an audio or video file, you would get a play button. Moving your mouse over a Word doc, a PowerPoint presentation, or PDF in the common file formats you would get forward and back arrows for paging through a document.
Searching Options

Windows 7 supports complex file searches involving multiple local, external and network drives. It offers additional search field that now displays frequently used keywords. However, these features are already in built-in Leopard's Spotlight. Further, it can also search content on other computers on the network or even over the Internet via Back to My Mac feature. What's more Spotlight offers advanced Boolean searches, and Smart search folders that automatically updates as the content changes.
Windows System Tray Versus Mac Menu Bar

Mac menu bar seems odd fixed to the top of the screen with no easy options to hide it. Clearly, the default time and date isn't that informative. On the other hand, Windows 7 offers an one-click full calender. It also allows the ability to easily customize what icons live there in one place. Windows 7 goes a step ahead in this.
Smoother Backup

Windows 7 introduces no significant changes in its built-in back-up drive, it still retains the conventional process to make an OS system image. The entire business of using it is quite complicated. Mac's Time Machine couldn't have been more intuitive and user-friendly and it's quite easy to restore the interface.
System-wide Notification

Windows 7 overwhelms Mac OS X in two features first the ability to drag and drop tray icons to the desktop and the way notification can be handled. There's a new notification center - Action Center, which allows you to configure eight global or individual settings for messages and their appearance. Further, you can block any message and check all message in the Action Center when you feel like. Snow Leopard lacks a system-wide notification feature for applications. Apple has a lesson to learn from Microsoft on this.
Aero Peek versus Expose

WIndows 7's Aero Peek feature requests all applauds for its beautiful thumbnail previewing and window clearing and docking. Mac OS X's Expose is nowhere near the Aero Peek
Network features

Windows 7 encloses a range of enticing new network features that has been designed to simplify the painful process of connecting to the network and dealing with its settings. What's interesting devices working in Windows 7 like printers can join a network with a single click and settings. and carried over automatically. Any user can access content on networked devices and stream content from other networked devices to any device in the network when in a Home Group. There is also a new Device Stage feature that lists all device-specific features that includes manuals. Snow Leopard shows no networking competencies, although networking is one of the strong features in Apple.
Conclusion

For a verdict we can look to the comments of Mossberg

In recent years, I, like many other reviewers, have argued that Apple's Mac OS X operating system is much better than Windows. That's no longer true. I still give the Mac OS a slight edge because it has a much easier and cheaper upgrade path; more built-in software programs; and far less vulnerability to viruses and other malicious software, which are overwhelmingly built to run on Windows.

Now, however, it's much more of a toss-up between the two rivals. Windows 7 beats the Mac OS in some areas, such as better previews and navigation right from the taskbar, easier organization of open windows on the desktopand [sic] touch-screen capabilities. So Apple will have to scramble now that the gift of aflawed [sic] Vista has been replaced with a reliable, elegant version of Windows.

Technorati Tags: WINDOW7 VERSUS,MAC,7,XP,OSX,22,LIVE,BING,GOOGLE

Will Photo Gallery and Movie Maker be included in Windows 7?

2009-10-21T16:43:00.001-07:00

They won't be included in the final versions of Windows 7. This is because Microsoft is trying to get away from cluttering a users machine and making the assumption that they will use their suites. In this way, you can download what you want for free and use it to your heart's content. The best part is that they're all now apart of the Live service so they all "talk" to each other. You can get them from

http://download.live.com

Technorati Tags: WINDOW LIVE,WINDOW 7,OS,XP,LIVE,BING,MAC

Windows 7 download

2009-10-21T16:37:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 Enterprise is the most advanced Windows operating system for business PCs, designed to meet the evolving needs of the users and IT professionals in your organization—both in and out of the office. With exclusive features and benefits, Windows 7 Enterprise drives lower total cost of ownership by helping your users stay productive anywhere, enhancing security and control, and simplifying PC management across your organization.

Welcome to the Windows 7 Enterprise 90-day Trial. It is designed specifically for IT Professionals, so that you can test your software and hardware on a final version of the product. In addition, it provides the opportunity for you to become more familiar with the key improvements over previous versions of the Windows operating system, and experience firsthand how Windows 7 can make your PC environment more productive, secure, and manageable.

Guidelines on usage:
Protect your PC and data. Be sure to back up your data and please don’t test Windows 7 on your primary home or business PC.
You have 10 days to activate the product. If not activated within 10 days, the system will shut down once every hour until activated. Unsure on how to activate? Visit our FAQ.
The 90-day Trial is the full working version of the Windows 7 Enterprise, the version most of you will be working with in your corporate environment. It will not require a product key (it is embedded with the download).
The 90-day Trial will shut down once every hour when you have reached the end of the 90-day evaluation period.
The 90-day Trial is offered for a limited time and in limited quantity. The download will be available through March 31, 2010, while supplies last.
After the 90-day Trial expires, if you wish to continue to use Windows 7 Enterprise, please note that you will be required to purchase and perform a clean installation of Windows 7, including drivers and applications. Please keep this in mind; Windows 7 Enterprise is not available through retail channels.
Technical details/updates/questions: Please review our FAQ or visit the Windows 7 support forum.
Stay informed. You can keep up with general technical information and news by following the Springboard Series blog. Want technical guidance, tips, and tools? Visit the Springboard Series on TechNet.
Keep your PC updated: Be sure to turn on automatic updates in Windows Update in case we publish updates for the 90-day Trial.
Microsoft Partners-: Learn more about Windows 7 on the Microsoft Partner Portal.

Minimum System Requirements*:
1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 GB of RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
DVD-compatible drive
Internet access (fees may apply)

DOWNLOAD WINDOW 7

LiveJournal Tags: window7,download,os,window,xp,vista

Windows 7 Secrets

2009-10-19T14:02:00.001-07:00

Windows Management. By now, you’ve probably seen that Windows 7 does a lot to make window management easier: you can “dock” a window to the left or right half of the screen by simply dragging it to the edge; similarly, you can drag the window to the top of the screen to maximize it, and double-click the window top / bottom border to maximize it vertically with the same horizontal width. What you might not know is that all these actions are also available with keyboard shortcuts:
Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;
Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes;
Win+Shift+Up Arrow and Win+Shift+Down Arrow maximizes and restores the vertical size.

This side-by-side docking feature is particularly invaluable on widescreen monitors – it makes the old Windows way of shift-clicking on two items in the taskbar and then using the context menu to arrange them feel really painful.

Display Projection. Had enough of messing around with weird and wonderful OEM display driver utilities to get your notebook display onto an external projector? In that case, you’ll be pleased to know that projection is really quick and simple with Windows 7. Just hit Win+P, and you’ll be rewarded by the following pop-up window:

Use the arrow keys (or keep hitting Win+P) to switch to “clone”, “extend” or “external only” display settings. You can also access the application as displayswitch.exe.

If you want broader control over presentation settings, you can also press Win+X to open the Windows Mobility Center, which allows you to turn on a presentation “mode” that switches IM clients to do not disturb, disables screensavers, sets a neutral wallpaper etc. (Note that this feature is also available in Windows Vista.)

Cut Out The Clutter. Working on a document in a window and want to get rid of all the extraneous background noise? Simply hit Win+Home to minimize all the non-active background windows, keeping the window you’re using in its current position. When you’re ready, simply press Win+Home again to restore the background windows to their original locations.
Multi-Monitor Windows Management. The earlier tip on window management showed how you can dock windows within a monitor. One refinement of those shortcuts is that you can use Win+Shift+Left Arrow and Win+Shift+Right Arrow to move windows from one monitor to another – keeping them in the same relative location to the monitor’s top-left origin.
Command Junkies Only. One of the most popular power toys in Windows XP was “Open Command Prompt Here”, which enabled you to use the graphical shell to browse around the file system and then use the context menu to open a command prompt at the current working directory. In Windows 7 (and in Windows Vista, incidentally – although not many folk knew about it), you can simply hold the Shift key down while selecting the context menu to get exactly the same effect. If the current working directory is a network location, it will automatically map a drive letter for you.
It’s a Global Village. If you’ve tried to change your desktop wallpaper, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a set of wallpapers there that match the locale you selected when you installed Windows. (If you picked US, you’ll see beautiful views of Crater Lake in Oregon, the Arches National Park, a beach in Hawai’i, etc.) In fact, there are several sets of themed wallpapers installed based on the language you choose, but the others are in a hidden directory. If you’re feeling in an international mood, simply browse to C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and you’ll see a series of pictures under the Wallpaper directory for each country. Just double-click on the theme file in the Theme directory to display a rotation through all the pictures for that country. (Note that some countries contain a generic set of placeholder art for now.)
The Black Box Recorder. Every developer wishes there was a way that an end-users could quickly and simply record a repro for the problem that they’re running into that is unique to their machine. Windows 7 comes to the rescue! Part of the in-built diagnostic tools that we use internally to send feedback on the product, the Problem Steps Recorder provides a simple screen capture tool that enables you to record a series of actions. Once you hit “record”, it tracks your mouse and keyboard and captures screenshots with any comments you choose to associate alongside them. Once you stop recording, it saves the whole thing to a ZIP file, containing an HTML-based “slide show” of the steps. It’s a really neat little tool and I can’t wait for it to become ubiquitous on every desktop! The program is called psr.exe; you can also search for it from Control Panel under “Record steps to reproduce a problem”.

The Font of All Knowledge. Long Zheng will be happy: we’ve got rid of the Add Fonts dialog that has served Windows faithfully for the last twenty years. (Of course, for most of that time, it’s been deprecated – the easy way to install a set of fonts has simply been to drag them into the Fonts folder via Control Panel.) But now font installation is really easy – we’ve added an “Install” button to the font viewer applet that takes care of the installation process:

There are lots of other new features built into Windows 7 that will satisfy those of a typographic bent, incidentally – grouping multiple weights together, the ability to hide fonts based on regional settings, a new text rendering engine built into the DirectWrite API, and support in the Font common file dialog for more than the four “standard” weights. For example:

Gabriola. As well as the other typographic features mentioned above, Windows 7 includes Gabriola, an elaborate display type from the Tiro Typeworks foundry that takes advantage of OpenType Layout to provide a variety of stylistic sets, flourishes and ornamentation ligatures:

Who Stole My Browser? If you feel like Internet Explorer is taking a long time to load your page, it’s worth taking a look at the add-ons you have installed. One of the more helpful little additions in Internet Explorer 8 is instrumentation for add-on initialization, allowing you to quickly see whether you’re sitting around waiting for plug-ins to load. Just click Tools / Manage Add-ons, and then scroll right in the list view to see the load time. On my machine, I noticed that the Research add-on that Office 2007 installs was a particular culprit, and since I never use it, it was simple to disable it from the same dialog box.
Rearranging the Furniture. Unless you’ve seen it demonstrated, you may not know that the icons in the new taskbar aren’t fixed in-place. You can reorder them to suit your needs, whether they’re pinned shortcuts or running applications. What’s particularly nice is that once they’re reordered, you can start a new instance of any of the first five icons by pressing Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 etc. I love that I can quickly fire up a Notepad2 instance on my machine with a simple Win+5 keystroke, for instance.

What’s less well-known is that you can similarly drag the system tray icons around to rearrange their order, or move them in and out of the hidden icon list. It’s an easy way to customize your system to show the things you want, where you want them.
Installing from a USB Memory Stick. My wife has a Samsung NC10 netbook (very nice machine, by the way), and we wanted to install Windows 7 Beta on this machine to replace the pre-installed Windows XP environment. Like most netbook-class devices, this machine has no built-in media drive, and nor did I have an external USB DVD drive available to boot off. The solution: I took a spare 4GB USB 2.0 thumbdrive, reformatted it as FAT32, and simply copied the contents of the Windows 7 Beta ISO image to the memory stick using xcopy e:\ f:\ /e /f (where e: was the DVD drive and f: was the removable drive location). Not only was it easy to boot and install from the thumbdrive, it was also blindingly fast: quicker than the corresponding DVD install on my desktop machine.

It’s also worth noting in passing that Windows 7 is far better suited to a netbook than any previous operating system: it has a much lighter hard drive and memory footprint than Windows Vista, while also being able to optimize for solid state drives (for example, it switches off disk defragmentation since random read access is as fast as sequential read access, and it handles file deletions differently to minimize wear on the solid state drive).
I Want My Quick Launch Toolbar Back! You might have noticed that the old faithful Quick Launch toolbar is not only disabled by default in Windows 7, it’s actually missing from the list of toolbars. As is probably obvious, the concept of having a set of pinned shortcut icons is now integrated directly into the new taskbar. Based on early user interface testing, we think that the vast majority of users out there (i.e. not the kind of folk who read this blog, with the exception of my mother) will be quite happy with the new model, but if you’re after the retro behavior, you’ll be pleased to know that the old shortcuts are all still there. To re-enable it, do the following:
Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar
In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.
Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

If it’s not obvious by the semi-tortuous steps above, it’s worth noting that this isn’t something we’re exactly desperate for folks to re-enable, but it’s there if you really need it for some reason. Incidentally, we’d love you to really try the new model first and give us feedback on why you felt the new taskbar didn’t suit your needs.
It’s a Drag. Much play has been made of the Jump Lists feature in Windows 7, allowing applications like Windows Live Messenger to offer an easy task-based entry point. Jump lists replace the default right-click context menu in the new taskbar; another way to access them (particularly useful if you’re running Windows 7 on a one-button MacBook) is by left-clicking and dragging up in a kind of “swooshing” motion. This was designed for touch-enabled devices like the beautiful HP TouchSmart all-in-one PC, where the same gesture applies.

Another place where you can “swoosh” (not an official Microsoft term) is the IE 8 address bar, where the downward drag gesture brings up an expanded list containing the browser history, favorites and similar entries. The slower you drag, the cooler the animation!
Standards Support. Every review of Windows 7 that I’ve seen has noted the revamped WordPad and Paint applets that add an Office-like ribbon to expose their functionality. Few, however, have noticed one small but hopefully appreciated feature: WordPad can now read and write both the Word 2007-compatible Office Open XML file format but also the OpenDocument specification that IBM and Sun have been advocating:

Windows Vista-Style Taskbar. I wasn’t initially a fan of the Windows 7 taskbar when it was first introduced in early Windows 7 builds, but as the design was refined in the run up to the beta, I was converted and now actively prefer the new look, particularly when I’ve got lots of windows open simultaneously. For those who really would prefer a look more reminiscent of Windows Vista, the good news is that it’s easy to customize the look of the taskbar to more closely mirror the old version:

To achieve this look, right-click on the taskbar and choose the properties dialog. Select the “small icons” checkbox and under the “taskbar buttons” setting, choose “combine when taskbar is full”. It’s not pixel-perfect in accuracy, but it’s close from a functionality point of view.
Peeking at the Desktop. While we’re on the taskbar, it’s worth noting a few subtleties. You’ve probably seen the small rectangle in the bottom right hand corner: this is the feature we call “Aero Peek”, which enables you to see any gadgets or icons you’ve got on your desktop. I wanted to note that there’s a keyboard shortcut that does the same thing – just press Win+Space.
Running with Elevated Rights. Want to quickly launch a taskbar-docked application as an administrator? It’s easy – hold down Ctrl+Shift while you click on the icon, and you’ll immediately launch it with full administrative rights (assuming your account has the necessary permissions, of course!)
One More of the Same, Please. I’ve seen a few folk caught out by this one. If you’ve already got an application open on your desktop (for example, a command prompt window), and you want to open a second instance of the same application, you don’t have to go back to the start menu. You can simply hold down the Shift key while clicking on the taskbar icon, and it will open a new instance of the application rather than switching to the existing application. For a keyboard-free shortcut, you can middle-click with the third mouse button to do the same thing. (This trick assumes that your application supports multiple running instances, naturally.)
Specialized Windows Switching. Another feature that power users will love is the ability to do a kind of “Alt+Tab” switching across windows that belong to just one application. For example, if you’ve got five Outlook message windows open along with ten other windows, you can quickly tab through just the Outlook windows by holding down the Ctrl key while you repeatedly click on the single Outlook icon. This will toggle through each of the five Outlook windows in order, and is way faster than opening Alt+Tab and trying to figure out which of the tiny thumbnail images relates to the specific message you’re trying to find.
Walking Through the Taskbar. Another “secret” Windows shortcut: press Win+T to move the focus to the taskbar. Once you’re there, you can use the arrow keys to select a particular window or group and then hit Enter to launch or activate it. As ever, you can cancel out of this mode by hitting the Esc key. I don’t know for sure, but I presume this shortcut was introduced for those with accessibility needs. However, it’s equally valuable to power users – another good reason for all developers to care about ensuring their code is accessible.
The Widescreen Tip. Almost every display sold these days is widescreen, whether you’re buying a notebook computer or a monitor. While it might be great for watching DVDs, when you’re trying to get work done it can sometimes feel like you’re a little squeezed for vertical space.

As a result, the first thing I do when I set up any new computer is to dock the taskbar to the left hand side of the screen. I can understand why we don’t set this by default – can you imagine the complaints from enterprise IT departments who have to retrain all their staff – but there’s no reason why you as a power user should have to suffer from default settings introduced when the average screen resolution was 800x600.

In the past, Windows did an indifferent job of supporting “side dockers” like myself. Sure, you could move the taskbar, but it felt like an afterthought – the gradients would be wrong, the Start menu had a few idiosyncrasies, and you’d feel like something of a second-class citizen. The Windows 7 taskbar feels almost as if it was designed with vertical mode as the default – the icons work well on the side of the screen, shortcuts like the Win+T trick mentioned previously automatically switch from left/right arrows to up/down arrows, and so on. The net effect is that you wind up with a much better proportioned working space.

Try it – in particular, if you’ve got a netbook computer that has a 1024x600 display, you’ll immediately appreciate the extra space for browsing the Internet. For the first day you’ll feel a little out of sync, but then I guarantee you’ll become an enthusiastic convert!
Pin Your Favorite Folders. If you’re always working in the same four or five folders, you can quickly pin them with the Explorer icon on the taskbar. Hold the right-click button down and drag the folder to the taskbar, and it will be automatically pinned in the Explorer Jump List.
Starting Explorer from “My Computer”. If you spend more time manipulating files outside of the documents folders than inside, you might want to change the default starting directory for Windows Explorer so that it opens at the Computer node:

To do this, navigate to Windows Explorer in the Start Menu (it’s in the Accessories folder). Then edit the properties and change the target to read:
%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

If you want the change to affect the icon on the taskbar, you’ll need to unpin and repin it to the taskbar so that the new shortcut takes affect. It’s worth noting that Win+E will continue to display the documents library as the default view: I’ve not found a way to change this from the shell at this time.
ClearType Text Tuning and Display Color Calibration. If you want to tune up your display for image or text display, we have the tools included out of the box. It’s amazing what a difference this makes: by slightly darkening the color of the text and adjusting the gamma back a little, my laptop display looks much crisper than it did before. You’d adjust the brightness and contrast settings on that fancy 42” HDTV you’ve just bought: why wouldn’t you do the same for the computer displays that you stare at every day?

heck out cttune.exe and dccw.exe respectively, or run the applets from Control Panel.
ISO Burning. Easy to miss if you’re not looking for it: you can double-click on any DVD or CD .ISO image and you’ll see a helpful little applet that will enable you to burn the image to a blank disc. No more grappling for shareware utilities of questionable parentage!

Windows Movie Maker. Windows 7 doesn’t include a movie editing tool – it’s been moved to the Windows Live Essentials package, along with Photo Gallery, Mail and Messenger. Unfortunately, Windows Live Movie Maker is currently still in an early beta that is missing most of the old feature set (we’re reworking the application), and so you might be feeling a little bereft of options. It goes without saying that we intend to have a better solution by the time we ship Windows 7, but in the meantime the best solution for us early adopters is to use Windows Movie Maker 2.6 (which is essentially the same as the most recent update to the Windows XP version). It’s missing the full set of effects and transitions from the Windows Vista version, and doesn’t support HD editing, but it’s pretty functional for the typical usage scenario of home movie editing.

Hiding the Windows Live Messenger Icon. Hopefully your first act after Windows 7 setup completed was to download and install the Windows Live Essentials suite of applications (if not, then you’re missing out on a significant part of the Windows experience). If you’re a heavy user of IM, you may love the way that Windows Live Messenger is front and central on the taskbar, where you can easily change status and quickly send an IM to someone:

On the other hand, you may prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray where it’s been for previous releases. If so, you can fool the application into the old style of behavior. To do this, close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode. Bingo!
Enjoy The Fish. I’m surprised that not many people seem to have caught the subtle joke with the Siamese fighting fish that is part of the default background, so I’ll do my part at keeping the secret hidden. Check out wikipedia for a clue.
When All Else Fails… There are always those times when you’re in a really bad spot – you can’t boot up properly, and what you really want is something you can quickly use to get at a command prompt so you can properly troubleshoot. Windows 7 now includes the ability to create a system repair disc, which is essentially a CD-bootable version of Windows that just includes the command prompt and a suite of system tools. Just type “system repair disc” in the Start Menu search box, and you’ll be led to the utility.

what is window 7 ?

2009-10-19T05:58:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) is the latest version of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs and media center PCs Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009 with general retail availability set for October 22, 2009 less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, is slated for release about the same time.

Unlike its predecessor, which introduced a large number of new features, Windows 7 is intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to the Windows line, with the goal of being fully compatible with applications and hardware with which Windows Vista is already compatible Presentations given by Microsoft in 2008 focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, including Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, will not be included in Windows 7 some will instead be offered separately as part of the free Windows Live Essentials suite

Features

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processorsimproved boot performance, DirectAccess, and kernel improvements. Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version of Windows Media Center a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion. Many new items have been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds), which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer. The default setting for User Account Control in Windows 7 has been criticized for allowing untrusted software to be launched with elevated privileges by exploiting a trusted application Microsoft's Windows kernel engineer Mark Russinovich acknowledged the problem, but noted that there are other vulnerabilities that do not rely on the new setting

The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons. To the far right of the system clock is a small rectangular button that serves as the Show desktop icon. This button is part of the new feature in Windows 7 called Aero Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop In touch-enabled displays such as touch screens, tablet PCs, etc., this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a finger Clicking this button minimizes all windows, and clicking it a second time restores them. Additionally, there is a feature named Aero Snap, that automatically maximizes a window when it is dragged to either the top or left/right edges of the screen This also allows users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen to compare them. When a user moves windows that are maximized, the system restores their previous state automatically. This functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Unlike in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aero applied. Instead, they remain transparent.

Windows 7 system requirements

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Additional requirements to use certain features:

Internet access (fees may apply)

Depending on resolution, video playback may require additional memory and advanced graphics hardware

Some games and programs might require a graphics card compatible with DirectX 10 or higher for optimal performance

For some Windows Media Center functionality a TV tuner and additional hardware may be required

Windows Touch and Tablet PCs require specific hardware

HomeGroup requires a network and PCs running Windows 7

DVD/CD authoring requires a compatible optical drive

BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2

BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive

Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on

Windows 7 editions

Windows 7 will be available in six different editions, but only Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate will be widely available at retail

so in short window 7 will rock in future

* source Wikipedia

Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts

2009-10-19T05:07:00.001-07:00

More Windows 7 goodness with the Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts post from Brandon Paddock. I’m a big fan on Windows Key + which brings up the funky little magnifying glass you can control as shown above. Handy for image editing etc. Here are a few others but for the full list head to Brandon’s blog
Win+Up: Maximize
Win+Down: Restore / Minimize
Win+Left: Snap to left
Win+Right: Snap to right
Win+Shift+Left: Jump to left monitor
Win+Shift+Right: Jump to right monitor
Win+Home: Minimize / Restore all other windows
Win+T : Focus the first taskbar entry
Win+Space: Peek at the desktop
Win+G: Bring gadgets to the top of the Z-order
Win+P: External display options (mirror, extend desktop, etc)
Win+X: Mobility Center (same as Vista, but still handy!)

Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guide from Microsoft

2009-10-19T04:59:00.001-07:00

Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and Microsoft® TechNet Magazine.

Looking for guidance specific to Windows 7 deployment? Check out what the industry’s leading experts have to say in this free Microsoft Press eBook with selected chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit on Deployment Platforms, Planning, Testing Application Compatibility

The chapters have been written by industry experts Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt, Ed Wilson, and the Windows 7 Team with select Windows 7 articles from TechNet Magazine. Sample topics include: Deployment Platform, Planning Deployment, Testing Application Compatibility, and 8 Common Issues in Windows 7 Migrations.

Download Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine from Microsoft.

Complete Windows 7 Products Guide from Microsoft

2009-10-19T04:53:00.001-07:00

The ultimate & complete Windows 7 product guide is here. Its an 4Mb and 141 pages long file, and as expected, a very comprehensive guide and covers everything you would want from one!

download

Windows 7 tweaking stuff

2009-10-19T04:45:00.001-07:00

Windows 7 Manager

Windows 7 Manager is the powerful software tool to tweak and optimize your Windows 7, it bundles more than 30 different utilities in one and help your system faster and more stable, secure and personal!
Features and Benefits of Windows 7 Manager
Information
Get detailed system and all hardware information on your system; help you find out the installation key of Windows, Office products; show all detailed information of running processes and threads on your machine; Windows 7 Manager offers 1-clicking cleans your system automatically.
Optimizer
Tweak your system to improve windows startup and shutdown speed; tweak your hardware to increase system speed and performance; Optimize Task Schedule to turn off unnecessary system tasks.
Cleaner
Find out which files or folders engross your disk space and shown with chart; Find and clean junk files to increase Hard Disk space; Duplicate Files Finder can scan your computer for files with the same size, name and modification time; Registry Cleaner can easily checks your registry and repair incorrectly linked registry entries, automatically remove invalid entries; Registry Defrag rebuilds and re-indexs your registry to reduce application response time and registry access time.
Customization
Control what is started on Windows startup; tune up Windows 7 boot menu; edit context menus of mouse Right-Clicking; customize system desktop, menus, toolbar and notifications settings; automatically change your desktop wallpaper on background.
Security
You can improve desktop, menus, Windows logon securities, and enable numerous hidden performance options of system, disable system updates and error reports; hide and restrict to access drives, specify which applications are not allowed to be executed on your computer; encrypt/decrypt and shred files, change the location of system folders; Privacy Protector can maintain your personal privacy by eliminating the tracks that you leave behind; create lots of randomization password once.
Network
Optimize your Internet connection speed, manage all shares items; tweak your Internet Explorer easily.
Misc. Utilities
Show the collection of Windows utilities; split and merge any file.

download

TweakNow PowerPack 2009

TweakNow PowerPack is a fully-integrated suite of utilities that let you fine-tune every aspect of your computer's operating system and Web browser. The Registry Cleaner module provides you with a safe and simple way to clean Windows Registry. To keep your computer always at top performance, we recommend to clean your registry at least once a month. For Windows tweaking lovers, the suite provides more than 100 hidden Windows settings in the Windows Secret section. Using modules included in this section, you can easily customize your Windows like geeks do. The Virtual Desktop module lets you run as many as four custom-designed desktop configurations simultaneously, allowing you to tailor your computer screen to your mood and your work requirements. Last but not least, the suite also gives you a complete picture of all aspects of your computer's hardware, including detailed information about your motherboard, processor, video card, memory, hard disk and network.

download

Win7Zilla

Taskbar and Start Menu

· Lock the Taskbar

· Disable Taskbar pinned programs

· Disable access to the context menus on the taskbar

· Hide the Clock from the System tray

· Hide the Action Centre icon from the System tray,

· Hide the Network icon from the System tray, Hide the Battery icon from the System tray, Hide the Volume icon from the System tray, Disable rearranging toolbars

· Disable adding or removing toolbars on the taskbar

· Disable all balloon notifications

· Prevent users from moving taskbar to another screen dock location

· Hide the notification area (System tray), Disable changes on Taskbar's toolbars

· Add Search the Internet to the Start Menu

· Add Run to the Start Menu

· Disable search for communications on the Start Menu

· Disable search for files on the Start Menu

· Disable search for internet history and favorites on the Start Menu

· Disable search for programs and control panel items on the Start Menu

· Remove All Users' items from the Programs menu on the Start Menu

· Remove Default Programs from the Start Menu

· Remove Documents from the Start Menu

· Remove Downloads from the Start Menu

· Remove Favourites menu from the Start Menu

· Remove Games from the Start Menu

· Remove Help from the Start Menu

· Remove Homegroup from the Start Menu

· Remove Music from the Start Menu

· Remove Network Places from the Start Menu

· Remove Pictures from the Start Menu

· Remove User Folder from the Start Menu

· Remove All Programs from the Start Menu

· Remove Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, Hibernate from the Start Menu

· Remove frequent programs from the Start Menu

· Remove Recents documents and items from the Start Menu

· Remove Recorded TV from the Start Menu

· Remove pinned programs from the Start Menu

· Remove Log Off from the Start Menu

· Disable See more results and Search Everywhere on the Start Menu

Desktop and Personalization

· Disable Aero Shake

· Remove all items on Desktop

· Hide Computer from the Desktop, Start Menu and Explorer

· Hide My Documents from the Desktop and Explorer

· Hide Recycle Bin from the Desktop and Explorer

· Hide Internet Explorer icon from the Desktop

· Hide Network Locations icon from the Desktop

· Hide Properties on the context menu of Computer (right click)

· Hide Properties on the context menu of Recycle Bin (right click)

· Do not save changes to desktop settings

· Disable Desktop Gadgets

· Disable User defined Gadgets

· Do not allow unsigned gadgets to be installed

· Prevent modifying window colour and appearance

· Prevent modifying desktop icons

· Prevent modifying screen saver

· Prevent modifying desktop background

· Prevent modifying Sounds Scheme

· Prevent modifying Mouse Pointers

System and Security

· Remove Change Password

· Prevent locking computer

· Disable Task Manager

· Do not allow loging off the system

· Prevent backing up data to local disk

· Prevent backing up data to Network location

· Prevent backing up data to CD/DVD

· Prevent backup functionality

· Prevent restore functionality

· Prevent creating system images

· Prevent access to all removable storage devices

· Prevent read access to CD and DVD

· Prevent write access to CD and DVD

· Prevent read access to floppy drives

· Prevent write access to floppy drives

· Prevent read access to removable drives

· Prevent write access to removable drives

· Prevent read access to tape drives

· Prevent write access to tape drives

· Prevent read access to media players, mobile phones, auxiliary displays and CE devices

· Prevent write access to media players, mobile phones, auxiliary displays and CE devices

· Do not allow access to Windows Update with notifications

· Do not allow access to Windows Update without notifications

Control Panel

· Prevent access to \"Set Program Access and Computer Defaults\" from Programs and Features in Control Panel

· Do not list installed programs from Programs and Features in Control Panel

· Do not list installed updates from Programs and Features in Control Panel

· Disable access to \"Turn Windows Features on or off\"

· Remove Administrative from Regional and Language Options

· Remove Location from Regional and Language Options

· Remove Formats from Regional and Language Options

· Remove Language from Keyboards and Languages Options in Control Panel

· Prevent adding new printers

· Prevent deleting new printers

· Disable browsing the network to find printers

· Do not allow access to properties of a LAN connection

· Do not allow access to "Windows Connect Now" wizards

· Do not allow sharing files within user's profile

Internet Explorer

· Disable AutoComplete

· Enable AutoComplete

· Disable access to Accessibility settings

· Disable changing Advanced tab in Internet Options

· Disable Automatic Configuration

· Disable changing Certificate Settings

· Disable changing Connection Settings

· Disable changing Language Setting

· Disable changing Proxy Setting

· Disable changing Temporary Internet Files Setting

· Disable Internet Connection Wizard

· Disable Auto Crash Recovery Prompt

· Disable Crash Detection

· Disable Favorites bar

· Disable tab grouping

· Disable tabbed browsing

· Disable Accelerators

· Only use Policy Accelerators

· Disable InPrivate Filtering

· Disable collecting InPrivate Filtering data

· Disable InPrivate Browsing

· Disable Developer Tools

· Disable toolbar upgrade tool

· Remove the Status bar

· Lock Internet Explorer Toolbars

· Set Stop and Refresh buttons on the left

· Remove the Command bar

Windows Explorer

· Do not display thumbnails in Windows Explorer

· Do not display snippets in Windows Explorer

· Do not display Security tab in Windows Explorer

· Remove Folder and Search Options in Windows Explorer

· Do not display Hardware tab in Windows Explorer's properties

· Do not display confirmation dialog when deleting files

· Do not display Menu bar in Windows Explore

· Do not display context menu in Windows Explorer

· Remove Manage in My Computer's Context Menu

· Remove CD burning feature in Windows Explorer

· Do not cache thumbnails pictures

· Disable numerical sorting in Windows Explorer

· Disable Windows hotkeys

download

Windows 7 Theme Collection

2009-10-18T17:40:00.001-07:00

40 Best Windows 7 Theme Collection | 243.53 MB

A complete Collection of latest and best Windows 7 Themes till now. Some themes are uploaded earlier but seems to be deleted so i Included those in these pack for You.

Installation:
Each Theme File individually contains instruction file with the name of original creator.Just follow that.Each file are working perfectly (Tested ).

This collection includes-

1.Dark 7 Mix Theme(My Favourite)
2.Colorful Theme
3.Embed Final Theme
4.Longhorn Air7 Beta
5.Harmony 7 Blue Alpha Theme
6.Gaia09 Visual Style
7.Windows 7 Prototype Bita2
8.Xero Theme
9.Soft7 Theme
10.Capriccio Theme
11.Windows 8 Theme
12.Longhorn Multitheme
13.OneWorld Theme
14.Leopard OS 10 Theme
15.4 Michael Jackson Theme
16.14 WIndows 7 Themepack
17.Aero Big Theme
18.Aero Diamond for Windows 7(64bit)
19.Aero Hilled Theme
20.Windows Nostalgia Theme
21.Only Black Windows 7
22.MAx Clear Live Black Theme
23.Windows 7 Red Theme
24.SiCo Theme
25.Windows 7 Blue Theme
26.Windows XP Theme

download

torrent

deposit file part1 part2

hotfile part1 part2

Privacy Policy

2009-10-17T02:52:00.000-07:00

Privacy Policy For www.window7blog.blogspot.com
The privacy of our visitors to www.window7blog.blogspot.com is important to us.

At www.window7blog.blogspot.com, we recognize that privacy of your personal information is important. Below is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use and visit www.window7blog.blogspot.com, and how we safeguard your information. We will never sell your personal information to third parties.

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We do use cookies to store information, such as your personal preferences when you visit our site. This could include only showing you a popup once in your visit, or the ability to login to some of our features, such as forums.
We also use third party advertisements on www.window7blog.blogspot.com to support our site. Some of these advertisers may use technology such as cookies and web beacons when they advertise on our site, which will also send these advertisers (such as Google through the Google AdSense program) information including your IP address, your ISP , the browser you used to visit our site, and in some cases, whether you have Flash installed. This is generally used for geotargeting purposes (showing New York real estate ads to someone in New York, for example) or showing certain ads based on specific sites visited (such as showing cooking ads to someone who frequents cooking sites).

DoubleClick DART Cookies

We also may use DART cookies for ad serving through Google’s DoubleClick, which places a cookie on your computer when you are browsing the web and visit a site using DoubleClick advertising (including some Google AdSense advertisements). This cookieis used to serve ads specific to you and your interests (”interest based targeting”). The ads served will be targeted based on your previous browsing history (For example, if you have been viewing sites about visiting Las Vegas, you may see Las Vegas hotel advertisements when viewing a non-related site, such as on a site about hockey). DART uses “non personally identifiable information”. It does NOT track personal information about you, such as your name, email address, physical
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