It offers better boot times. And it performs better on machines with multi-core processors. And, User Account Control can be tweaked. You can make it less intrusive than in Vista.

Its tools will help you fine-tune type and calibrate your monitor.

Moreover, Windows 7 improves the way you interact with your computer. Support for speech and handwriting recognition is improved.

Touch screen support is also improved. For example, Windows now boasts multitouch. The iPhone popularized multitouch. You can use your fingers to resize photos and the like. You'll need a track pad that supports multitouch.

The most noticeable changes have been made to the taskbar. You can pin programs to it. Drag and drop to rearrange the programs.

When you mouse over program buttons, you'll see thumbnail previews. Hold your mouse over one of these thumbnails for a full-screen preview.

http://www.komando.com/tips/index.aspx?id=7385

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WINDOWS 7

Premium Professional Ultimate

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Windows 7 Safer from Malware Than XP, Vista.

Detections per operating systems.

Detections

In the first week after the release of Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft says, the software was downloaded 1.5 million times. The software detected nearly four million security problems on 535,752 different PCs.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/173835/windows_7_safer_from_malware_than_xp_vista.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl

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From Jim Pepperl:

Windows 7: Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2009

After using pre-release versions of Windows 7 for nine months, and intensively testing the final version for the past month on many different machines, I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft has produced. It's a boost to productivity and a pleasure to use.

Windows 7 introduces real advances in organizing your programs and files, arranging your taskbar and desktop, and quickly viewing and launching the page or document you want, when you want it. It also has cool built-in touch-screen features.

It removes a lot of clutter. And it mostly banishes Vista's main flaws-sluggishness; incompatibility with third-party software and hardware; heavy hardware requirements; and constant, annoying security warnings.

I tested Windows 7 on 11 different computers, ranging from tiny netbooks to standard laptops to a couple of big desktops.

In most cases, the installation took 45 minutes or less, and the new operating system worked snappily and well.

Finally, Microsoft has stripped Windows 7 of familiar built-in applications, such as email, photo organizing, address book, calendar and video-editing programs. These can be downloaded free of charge, but they no longer come with the operating system, though some PC makers may choose to pre-load them.

Here are some of the key features of Windows 7.

New Taskbar: In Windows 7, the familiar taskbar has been reinvented and made taller. Instead of mainly being a place where icons of open windows temporarily appear, it now is a place where you can permanently "pin" the icons of frequently used programs anywhere along its length, and in any arrangement you choose.

For each running program, hovering over its taskbar icon pops up a small preview screen showing a mini-view of that program. This preview idea was in Vista. But, in Windows 7, it has been expanded in several ways. Now, every open window in that program is included separately in the preview. If you mouse over a window in the preview screen, it appears at full size on your desktop and all other windows become transparent-part of a feature called Aero Peek. Click on the window and it comes up, ready for use. You can even close windows from these previews, or play media in them.

You can also use Aero Peek at any time to see your empty desktop, with open windows reduced to virtual panes of glass. To do this, you just hover over a small rectangle at the right edge of the taskbar.

Taskbar icons also provide Jump Lists-pop-up menus listing frequent actions or recent files used.

A feature called Snap allows you to expand windows to full-screen size by just dragging them to the top of the screen, or to half-screen size by dragging them to the left or right edges of the screen. Another called Shake allows you to make all other windows but the one you're working on disappear by simply grabbing its title bar with the mouse and shaking it several times.

File organization: In Windows Explorer, the left-hand column now includes a feature called Libraries. Each library-Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos-consolidates all files of those types regardless of which folder, or even which hard disk, they live in.

Networking: Now you can see all available wireless networks by clicking on an icon in the taskbar. A new feature called HomeGroups is supposed to let you share files more easily among Windows 7 PCs on your home network. In my tests, it worked, but not consistently, and it required typing in long, arcane passwords.

Touch: Some of the same kinds of multitouch gestures made popular on the iPhone are now built into Windows 7. Your computer will need a special type of touch screen.

Speed: In my tests, on every machine, Windows 7 ran swiftly and with far fewer of the delays typical in running Vista. All the laptops I tested resumed from sleep quickly and properly, unlike in Vista. Start-up and restart times were also improved.

Nagging: In the name of security, Vista put up nagging warnings about a wide variety of tasks, driving people crazy. In Windows 7, you can now set this system so it nags you only when things are happening that you consider really worth the nag.

Compatibility: I tried a wide variety of third-party software and all worked fine on every Windows 7 machine. These included Mozilla Firefox; Adobe Reader; Google's Picasa and Chrome; and Apple's iTunes and Safari.

For a full version of this article:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB20001424052748703298004574459293141191728-lMyQjAyMDA5MDEwMTExNDEyWj.html

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3 Key Tweaks for Windows 7

http://www.pcworld.com/article/172598/3_key_tweaks_for_windows_7.html?tk=nl_hox_h_cbstories

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One download, lots of great stuff. Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, etc.

http://download.live.com/?mkt=en-us

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