Sat, May 16, 2009 - Page 16 News List

[ TECHNOLOGY ]Windows 7: small improvements make a big splash

Microsoft learned its lesson the hard way after Vista was released to a chorus of criticism

By Jay Dougherty  /  DPA , WASHINGTON

Libraries in Windows 7 are actually pointers to one or more locations on your hard drive where documents of a certain type are stored. The Documents library, for example, can contain pointers to the location where you keep your Word documents, your Excel spreadsheets and your PowerPoint presentations. The library concept is quite powerful because with one click you can actually see or search through documents that are in fact stored in many different locations.

Right-clicking a library name and selecting Properties brings up a dialog box that allows you to establish the locations to which that library points. The default library names that Microsoft supplies are fully configurable — or deleteable.

• Homegroup

Homegroup is another new concept in Windows 7, and it’s designed to make the process of sharing files, music, videos, pictures and printers on a home network much easier than before.

The process is simple. Click the word Homegroup in Windows Explorer — or in Computer from the Start menu — and indicate which resources you’d like to make available to others. Once your homegroup is created, others within your home can access your resources simply by clicking the word ‘homegroup’ as you did. Homegroup is only available on Windows 7 computers, and it’s only available on home networks.

• No nags

If Vista users had one message to deliver to Microsoft, it was probably “stop bugging me!” Vista drove people crazy at almost every turn, alerting them when their antivirus software was out of date or not installed, when a network was found or lost, when a firewall was not configured, when there was something awry with security settings, when a backup had not been configured, and of course whenever a file was to be deleted or a program installed. It’s no wonder that most companies still use XP.

With Windows 7, you can get rid of all of those types of nagging messages with a few clicks. Stop in at the new Change Action Center Settings screen, take a look at all of the ways that Windows has to annoy you, and turn everything off. Voila! No more nags.

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