Windows 7 makes managing and configuring your digital assets easier with a newly designed Devices and Printers dashboard that easily lets you configure, test, setup and even classify your devices. Instead of having to navigate through several menus with many complex actions like in previous versions of Windows, in Windows 7 its all under one roof so its point, click and done!
Exploring Windows 7 – Devices and Printers Video Tutorial
I keep finding all sorts of little tools buried in Windows 7 that keep making my digital life a bit easier. One tool that I found has the potential to make math & science students jump for joy – the math input panel tool. This tool, which works great with a tablet PC, lets you freehand mathematical and scientific equations and have them converted into readable text so they can be inserted into documents such as Word or OneNote.
In this video I walk you through an example of how the tool works while I talk a little bit more about the geeky side of Windows 7!
Exploring the Geeky Side of Windows 7 – Math Input Panel
Some of the improvements in Windows 7 aren’t apparent without digging around a bit. One of the improvements is in the disk defragmenter. The interface has been redesigned and by default defragmentation jobs are scheduled weekly at 1:00 AM on new installs. Defragmentation helps keep your files in order and can greatly improve your performance, especially on large drives.
One of the cool features in Windows 7 is that it is smart enough to know not to defragment solid-state or USB drives to help preserve their life. A lot of people are unaware that solid-state drives (like that USB stick you store your files on) have a limited number of read/write cycles to them!
It’s just one more way Windows 7 is helping make your digital life a little bit easier.
Windows 7 in 77 Seconds – Disk Defragmentation
One of the things I do a lot is send “snippets” of my screen to others to show them things I am talking about, or to capture images that I use for some of the websites I maintain, or even in this blog posting (hint: the image to your right in a snippet from the Microsoft Windows 7 homepage). Up until now you had to rely on third-party tool to perform such a function, or use the old shift+PrintScreen trick that resulted in a huge capture of everything on the screen. In Windows 7 your digital life gets a whole lot simpler with the introduction of the Snipping Tool.
This guy has been around since the Vista days, but in Windows 7 it is now installed by default in Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate. It’s a great way to help communicate with your friends, family and co-workers visually – share as little or as much as you want!
I have no doubt this little tool will soon find itself amongst those “can’t live without” tools that you use everyday!
Windows 7 in 77 Seconds – Snipping Tool
Previous versions of Windows made burning ISO files a chore. You either had to purchase a third party app that could cost over $100 that was filled with bloatware you didn’t need, or you could try and find a freeware utility that might or might not work and more often than not produced more bad discs than good ones.
With Windows 7 Microsoft has made it easier to keep your digital life in order by including a built-in ISO burner that lets you easily right click on an ISO file and burn it to CD or DVD. Now only if they would let us view the contents of an ISO file without having to burn it first!
Windows 7 in 77 Seconds – Burning ISO Images
Windows 7 continues to help make your digital life a bit easier by helping you keep things organized and easily accesible. In the new pinning feature, which replaces the quick launch feature of previous versions of Windows, you can now organize your favorite and often-used programs on your task bar or in your start menu. However its not just a favorite list, but thanks to context-sensitive menus built into your applications you can now easily access settings, documents and favorites for those programs with a click of a mouse.
In this video I walk you through this feature and show you how it makes my digital life just a bit easier.
Windows 7 in 77 Seconds – Pinning
Windows 7 has expanded the power of the Search feature in the Start Menu to help make your life easier, even when you aren’t sure what you are looking for! No more hunting around for files or applications. Windows 7 allows you to index not only documents, videos, music and more – but it also lets you integrate your e-mail and even web searches. In this Windows 7 in 77 Seconds video I walk you through some of the cool new features of the Windows 7 Start Menu search feature.
Windows 7 in 77 Seconds – Start Menu Searching
Wouldn’t it be cool to have a slideshow of your favorite pictures as your Windows background? Well thanks to the new Aero themes in Windows 7 you don’t have to wait any more – it’s a reality! You can create your own slideshow using pictures of your choice and have Windows 7 rotate through them as you go about your daily work. Here’s a tip, though, if you are using a high resolution monitor (as most of us are nowadays) be sure to use pictures that haven’t been shrunk down or resized – I found I got the best visual quality when I used pictures straight from my digital camera that hadn’t been resized at all.
Stay tuned for more Windows 7 in 77 seconds tips as we countdown to the launch of Windows 7 on October 22nd!
Windows 7 in 77 Seconds – Desktop Slideshow
Sep 29
Windows 7 hits the shelves on October 22nd and Microsoft has been busy creating a number of promotions to help celebrate its launch. In fact, I even managed to score some loot in the #WinWin7 contests taking place over on Twitter (follow @MSWindows for more info).
It’s all this buzz about Windows 7 that got me thinking – what could I do that would be a cool twist on the whole “7” thing and then it hit me – short, 77 second training videos for Windows 7! There are so many cool little features that are hiding in Windows 7 that short little videos are all it takes to get users going “Oooh, Ahhh” and wanting to try it for themselves.
So tonight, live on this very blog (well, not technically live) I present the first in a series of Windows 7 in 77 Seconds training videos – Window Resizing.
Windows 7 in 77 Seconds – Window Resizing
Every now and then you come across a little-known tool buried away somewhere that you immediately fall in love with. For me, one of those tools has been the new Problem Step Recorder tool that comes with Windows 7. A colleague of mine informed me about this little gem, and after using it once I was hooked. This guy finally makes creating technical documentation and how-to guides fun!
It’s a pretty simple tool to use – you simple launch the tool from Windows 7 by typing “PSR” from the Run window and then hit the record button and let it watch what you are doing (you can also find it hiding in the Control Panel area as well). When you are done, stop the recording and it will save a dynamic HTML file with screenshots, annotations and even comments that you have added. The final quality of the documentation is outstanding – people will think that you hired a technical copy editor to produce something this good.
This tool is really useful for those times when you need to explain something to friends, family or colleagues and you can’t “show them” yourself. It’s also a handy tool to use for remote diagnosis. Suppose your son or daughter is away at college and is having a problem with their laptop. You could ask them to run this, recreate the problem, and then send you the file it creates. You could then see what is going on without having to connect to their PC or have them try to explain it over the phone or email.
Developers will also find this tool handy for helping create installation and technical documentation for programs. All too often documentation is an afterthought because most people find it such a chore to write and maintain. With PSR you can now just record what you are doing and annotate it – instant documentation!
I’ve created a sample of what Problem Step Recorder can do that you can view online. Click here to be taken to the demo showing off a technical step-by-step of opening up a draft file in Windows Live Writer.
The more I use Windows 7 the more I find these “hidden gems” and discover some of the really cool features Microsoft has buried into the OS. Windows XP had a long life, but now the time (and features) are right for Windows 7 to finally take the throne.
