1. Revamped Taskbar
Windows has been equipped with a "Quick Launch" toolbar for over ten years. This little section of the taskbar lets you store your most frequently used applications for one-click access, and is always visible no matter how many applications are active. In Windows 7, Microsoft have combined this "Quick Launch" idea with the main Taskbar purpose of displaying the currently running programs to create an area that enables launching, monitoring, and switching of applications, without consuming acres of screen space.
2. HomeGroups
Not everybody has a Country Consulting support engineer in their house. If you're one of the ones without, you may find sharing your files and printers on a home network troublesome. Windows Vista promised to make networking, even for home users, straightforward and intuitive, and then failed to deliver. With Windows 7 Microsoft have introduced the HomeGroup, a simple and effective way to quickly get the computers in your home to talk to each other. In your home network you set a single password, and any computer that knows this password does all the work of making sure the other computers know how to get to it.
3. Recent Documents History
Besides the internet browsing history, Windows previously offered little in terms of quick access to recently used documents. A folder could be found in the Start Menu with the 15 most recently used documents but if you were looking through a folder of photos, you might wipe these out in two minutes. In Windows 7, every application has its own document history, and it's accessed just by pointing at the link in the Start Menu or right-click on the the icon in your Taskbar.
4. Revamped Sidebar
One of the biggest complaints about Windows Vista was the performance impact of the Sidebar. The gadgets you could get to run inside this tool were varied and powerful, but actually having the sidebar running could interfere with full-screen applications and on lower-end systems would cause slowdown. The Sidebar itself is gone in Windows 7, but the gadgets remain as a built-in part of the Operating System. Performance is vastly improved, the often troublesome transparency effect is removed, and what's more all the gadgets developed for the Windows Vista Sidebar still function in Windows 7!
5. Updates to Old Favourites
Paint and Wordpad have changed very little since their introduction in Windows 3.1, back in 1992. That is, they changed very little until Windows 7. Finally these basic applications have been given more than just a facelift in the new version, with new features to match their latest new look.
6. Automatic Window Rearranging
Gone are the days when your choice was "maximised, or manually stretched to where you want it." Windows in Windows 7 come with a variety of ways to automatically arrange them according to your whim. Drag a window to the top of the screen, and it will automatically maximise. Drag a window to the side of the screen, and it will fit itself to exactly half of the width of the screen - do this with two windows to quickly set yourself up with a side-by-side comparison of documents using two easy mouse movements. The best bit is, it remembers exactly how it was and will snap straight back as soon as you're done.
7. Snipping Tool
To be honest, this tool was introduced in Windows Vista and hasn't really changed in Windows 7, but here's the thing: Windows Vista has been so badly received that most users are still on Windows XP so this is new. Plus, it's just such a great little tool. It's the sort of thing that makes you think "I can't see how I'd need to use that," but once you've tried it you won't know how you got by without it. It's the tool I've used to take all the screenshots for this article.
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