Windows 7 Features; Touch

Touch

Move over mouse: When you pair Windows 7 with a touch-screen PC, you can browse online newspapers, flick through photo albums, and shuffle files and folders—using nothing but your fingers.

Limited one-finger touch capability has been available in Windows for years. But Windows 7 is the first to fully embrace multitouch technology. Need to zoom in on something? Place two fingers on the screen of a multitouch-compatible PC and spread them apart. To right-click a file, touch it with one finger and tap the screen with a second.

Windows Touch—available only in the Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions of Windows 7—is fun to learn and easy to use. The Start menu and taskbar now sport larger, fingertip-friendly icons. All your favorite Windows 7 programs are also touch-ready. You can even finger paint in Paint!

Windows 7 Features; Play To

Play To

Play To, new in Windows 7, makes it easy to play your music on other PCs or devices around the house. Just right-click the tracks you’d like to hear and select Play To—now you're a DJ.

Play To works with other PCs running Windows 7 and devices compliant with the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) media standard. Today that includes popular products such as the Roku Soundbridge, Linksys DMP100, and Xbox 360.

Windows 7 Features; Power Management

Power Management

Tired of your laptop dying when you need it most? Windows 7 is designed to help your battery last longer.

How? For starters, Windows 7 runs with fewer background activities so your PC processor doesn't work as hard and draws less power. Other innovations include less power-hungry DVD playback (handy on long flights), automatic screen dimming, powering off unused ports, and a more accurate battery-life indicator. So you'll be less likely to be surprised by a dead battery.

Windows 7 Features; Libraries

Libraries

Libraries—new in Windows 7—make it easier to find, work with, and organize files scattered across your PC or network. A library brings your stuff together in one place—no matter where it's actually stored. The result? You get more done.

Say you're assembling a family album from snapshots stashed on an external hard drive, your spouse’s PC, and your work laptop. In the past, hunting down specific shots would've been a chore. In Windows 7, you simply create a library, name it something (perhaps, "Family Photos"), and then tell Windows which far-flung folders your new library should include. Your photos are still physically located in three different spots—but now they show up in a single window.

Windows 7 comes with libraries for documents, music, pictures, and videos. But you can personalize these, or create your own, with just a few clicks. There's more. You can also quickly sort and shuffle your libraries—for example, documents by type, pictures by date taken, or music by genre. And easily share libraries with people on a home network.

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Power Management

Windows 7 Features; HomeGroup

HomeGroup

HomeGroup takes the headache out of sharing files and printers on a home network. Connect two or more PCs running Windows 7, and HomeGroup makes it easy to automatically start sharing your music, pictures, video, and document libraries with others in your home. The new “Share with” menu, meanwhile, provides a speedy way to share individual files.

Concerned about privacy? So are we. That’s why HomeGroup is password-protected and puts you in total control. You decide what gets shared—and what stays private. You can also make your files "read only," so other people can look at (but not touch) your stuff.

You can join a homegroup in any edition of Windows 7, but you can only create one in Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate.

Windows 7 Features; Device Stage

See all your devices in one spot

A new technology in Windows 7 called Device Stage takes device management a step further. Device Stage helps you interact with any compatible device connected to your computer. From Device Stage you can see device status and run common tasks from a single window. There are even pictures of the devices which makes it really easy to see what's there. Device manufacturers can customize Device Stage. For example, if your camera manufacturer offers a custom version of Device Stage, then when you plug your camera into your PC, you could see things like the number of photos on your camera and links to helpful information.

Windows 7 Features; Shake & Snap

Aero Shake

Ever need to cut through a cluttered desktop and quickly focus on a single window? Just click a pane and give your mouse a shake. Voila! Every open window except that one instantly disappears. Jiggle again—and your windows are back. (Who says the old mouse can’t learn a new trick?) For a demonstration check out the video on the right.

Snap

Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen. Depending on which edge you choose—top or bottom, left or right—the window will expand vertically, fill the screen, or you can even position windows side by side. Snap makes reading, organizing, and comparing windows a...well, you get the picture.

Windows 7 Features; Jump List

Jump Lists—new in Windows 7—take you right to the documents, pictures, songs, or websites you turn to each day. To open a Jump List, just right-click a program icon on the Windows 7 taskbar. (You'll also find them on the Start menu.)

What you see in a Jump List depends entirely on the program. The Jump List for Internet Explorer 8 shows frequently-viewed websites. Windows Media Player 12 lists commonly-played tunes. Your Jump List missing a favorite? You can "pin" whatever files you like there.

Jump Lists don't just show shortcuts to files. Sometimes they also provide quick access to commands for things like composing new e mail messages or playing music.

Windows 7 Now Available

Windows 7 Now Available on Amazon.com;
Beginning today, October 22, 2009, Microsoft’s newest operating system is available on Amazon.com.

Windows 7 is a truly exciting new Microsoft launch with great new features including Jump Lists, Aero Shake, Snap, new Device Stage Management, as well as new levels of home group network interaction. Your customers will be able to interactively learn about these features and more at the