As I was working on various tasks today (playing with VPC images, ISO files, and a few others), I stumbled across a couple of additional features of Windows 7 that I wanted to share. These are just some quick hits, presented in no particular order.
| | Right-click an ISO file and there's an option to Burn disc image; sweet! Now I have the latest MSDN Library burning to DVD and I didn't have to scramble for a ISO burning utility. |
| | You can mount a VHD (virtual hard drive) in the disk management utility and treat it like a disk; handy for developers and IT Pros! |
| | I will admit I find UAC to be pretty annoying in Windows Vista. For example, move a shortcut in the All Users Start Menu and you get asked not once but twice to confirm the action. I prefer to keep UAC on at all times, despite the frustration; it's come to my rescue, after all – even reputable sites will occasionally try to install bits through IE and UAC makes it quite clear what they are doing. The new, improved UAC has a slider to control the level of interaction, from off to protect-me-from-everything. I keep UAC at the default level and it is surprisingly quiet compared to Vista. It pretty much only prompts me when I really only want it to protect me. Great improvement! |
| | The Sidebar – you know, the container docked on the side of the screen with the stock ticker and weather gadgets – is a really nice addition to Windows Vista. We have a couple of really handy internal gadgets that I always install, so I am a fan of this feature. Being a bit OCD about my environment, I never really liked the fact I was forced to have them all together. Moreover, I didn't like the fact that, if I had more gadgets than my screen could display, the extras spilled to a second "page" of the Sidebar. Problem solved in Windows 7! Gadgets "float" wherever you want them. I can have several placed where I need them on my desktop, and see them whenever I use the next quick hit… |
| | There's a little button down in the lower right corner of the taskbar. If you click the little button, all the windows minimize. But if you hover over the little button, and you have Aero, each window goes transparent and you see the desktop – and those handy gadgets you have floating where you left them. |
| | Tim Sneath's Bumper List covers the details much better than I can, but the quick summary is that you can drag windows to the top, bottom or sides of the screen and they dock there. It's great for quickly viewing folder contents or documents side-by-side. Drag them back away from the screen edge and the window restores to its former shape. Nice! |
| | I am not fortunate enough to have multi-touch enabled hardware, but I got to play with a couple of computers that support single- and multi-touch and it pretty engaging, supporting touch-based clicking and dragging, multi-finger window sizing, and flicking gestures. I now know what I want to purchase for my next hardware refresh. |
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