New Desktop. New taskbar previews, bigger icons, icon pinning, and creative ways to personalize.
Overwhelmed by open windows? Windows 7 comes with three simple yet powerful new features called Aero Shake, Aero Peek, and Snap to help you instantly clear through your desktop clutter. Picture of Aero PeekPeek-a-boo: Aero Peek turns open windows translucent so you can see what's on your desktop. 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 won't learn a new trick?) Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen. Depending on where you drag a window, you can make it expand vertically, take up the entire screen, or appear side-by-side with another window. Snap makes reading, organizing, and comparing windows a...well, you get the picture.
More Features!
Jump Lists
Got a file, photo, or website you use a lot? Open it in two clicks. Jump Lists keep the most recent things you've used handy for faster access than ever.
The taskbar gives you a quick way to find the programs and files you've got open. With Windows 7, you'll see the next big jump (pun intended) in making it easier to find what you need. Jump Lists take you right to the documents, pictures, songs, or websites you use most often. To open a Jump List, just right-click a program icon on the Windows 7 taskbar. You can also see Jump Lists for the programs on your Start menu and just click on the arrow next to the program name.
Aero
Aero is a set of visual effects that make your desktop more beautiful while making it easier to look through the windows you have open to find what you want. Opening, closing, and sorting through windows is a lot easier. You can find what you want and get things done a lot faster. And, it's pretty.
New ways to juggle windows
Overwhelmed by open windows? Windows 7 comes with three simple yet powerful new features called Shake, Peek, and Snap to help you instantly clear through desktop clutter. What do you need?
Spectacular new wallpapers
We spend a lot of time staring at our PCs. Aesthetics shouldn't just be an afterthought. That's why Windows 7 includes a slew of new desktop backgrounds and wallpapers that range from sublime to silly. Or try the new desktop slide show, which displays a rotating series of pictures (ours or yours). Your desktop will never be dull again.
Retooled taskbar
Open files and get around your PC faster. You can even pin programs you use often to the taskbar so you can launch them in just one click.
o has served as the go-to spot to see what programs you have open and to switch windows. Times and PC habits have changed. So in Windows 7, the taskbar has been completely redesigned to help you get more done with fewer clicks. For starters, you can arrange programs where you want them on the taskbar, pin the ones you use a lot so they're always there, and launch them directly from the taskbar. When you open programs and windows, it's a lot easier to see what's open.
Improved gadgets
Gadgets, the popular mini-programs introduced in Windows Vista, are now more flexible and fun. And, now you can stick your gadgets anywhere on the desktop.
Home Group
Easily share the photos, music, and files on each of the PCs running Windows 7 on your home network. It's especially handy when you want to share a printer.
Have you ever needed to print a file at home when you weren't connected to a printer? Did you decide that even with a home network, it was easier to just put the file on a USB drive and take it to the PC with the printer? That's one reason we created HomeGroup. New with Windows 7, HomeGroup takes the headache out of sharing files, devices, 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.
BitLocker
If you've got information on your PC that you need to protect, you can help prevent theft or loss by using BitLocker data encryption to put a virtual lock on your files.
How can you help protect your data from loss, theft, or hackers? The answer: BitLocker. If you've got information on your PC that you need to protect, you can help prevent theft or loss by using BitLocker data encryption to put a virtual lock on your files.
Improved for Windows 7 and available in the Ultimate edition, BitLocker helps keep everything from documents to passwords safer by encrypting the entire drive that Windows and your data reside on. Once BitLocker is turned on, any file you save on that drive is encrypted automatically.
BitLocker To Go a new feature of Windows 7 gives the lockdown treatment to easily-misplaced portable storage devices like USB flash drives and external hard drives.
Windows Media Center
Record TV. Watch Internet TV. Watch DVDs. Enjoy online entertainment. Play your music and watch your videos and slideshows. It's all here. Watch, pause, and record live TV. Listen to your tunes. Show off your photo collection. Enjoy online entertainment. And do it all from your living-room couch. In Windows 7, we've made it even better adding great new features and visual touch-ups. Windows Media Center is available in the Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions of Windows 7.
Windows XP Mode
Get all the benefits of Windows 7 and continue to leverage your investments in older business and productivity programs that require a PC running Windows XP. Note: Windows XP Mode requires a download. It's the best of both worlds: The new Windows XP Mode lets you run older Windows XP business software right on your Windows 7 desktop.
This feature is designed primarily with small- and medium-sized businesses in mind. Windows XP Mode comes as a separate download and works only with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. Windows XP Mode also requires virtualization software such as Windows Virtual PC. Both are available free on the Microsoft website.
