Features of windows 7

Windows 7 is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on

personal computers, including home and business desktops,
laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing
on July 22, 2009, and reached general retail availability worldwide on
October 22, 2009, less than three years after the release of its
predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows
Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time. Windows 7 is succeeded
by Windows 8, released on 26 October 2012.

Unlike Windows Vista, which introduced a large number of new features,

Windows 7 was intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to
the Windows line, with the goal of being compatible with applications and
hardware with which Windows Vista was already compatible.Presentations
given by Microsoft in 2008 focused on multi-touch support, a
redesigned Windows shell with a new taskbar, referred to as the
Superbar, a home networking system called Home Group and
performance improvements. Some standard applications that have been
included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, including Windows
Calendar, Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo
Gallery, are not included in Windows 7; most are instead offered
separately at no charge as part of the Windows Essentials suite.

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch

and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved
performance on multi-core processors, improved boot
performance, DirectAccess, and kernel improvements. Windows 7 adds
support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from
different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version
ofWindows Media Center, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved
media features, the XPSEssentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being
included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities
including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion for
length, weight, temperature, and several others. Many new items have
been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display
Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting,
Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager,
Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display. Windows Security
Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health
Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds), which
encompasses bothsecurity and maintenance of the computer. ReadyBoost
on 32-bit editions now supports up to 256 gigabytes of extra allocation.
The default setting for User Account Control in Windows 7 has been
criticized for allowing untrusted software to be launched with elevated
privileges without a prompt by exploiting a trusted application.
Microsoft's Windows kernel engineer Mark Russinovich acknowledged the
problem, but noted that malware can also compromise a system when
users agree to a prompt. Windows 7 also supports images in RAW image
format through the addition ofWindows Imaging Component-enabled
image decoders, which enables raw image thumbnails, previewing and
metadata display in Windows Explorer, plus full-size viewing and
slideshows in Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Media Center.

The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch
toolbar has been replaced with the ability to pin applications to the
taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task
buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy
access to common tasks. The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering
of taskbar buttons. To the far right of the system clock is a small
rectangular button that serves as the Show desktop icon. This button is
part of the new feature in Windows 7 called Aero Peek. Hovering over this
button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the
desktop. In touch-enabled displays such as touch screens, tablet PCs,
etc., this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a
finger. Clicking this button minimizes all windows, and clicking it a second
time restores them. Additionally, there is a feature named Aero Snap,
that automatically maximizes a window when it is dragged to the top of
the screen. Dragging windows to the left/right edges of the screen allows
users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen for
comparison between windows, such that the windows vertically take up
half the screen. When a user moves windows that were maximized using
Aero Snap, the system restores their previous state automatically. This
functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Unlike
in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque
when a window is maximized withWindows Aero applied. Instead, they
remain translucent.

For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support

for building SOAP-based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET-
based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install
times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation
packages, and improved globalization support through a new Extended
Linguistic Services API. At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color
depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with
the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and
output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit
sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB,
and 48-bit scRGB. Microsoft has also implemented better support forsolid-
state drives, including the new TRIM command, and Windows 7 is able to
identify a solid-state drive uniquely. Support for USB 3.0 is not included
due to delays in the finalization of the standard.

Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which

were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7. Windows
7 includes Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12. Users are
also able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in
Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet
Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows
Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform. Windows 7 includes 13
additional sound schemes, titled Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters,
Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga,
Savanna, and Sonata. A new version of Microsoft Virtual PC, newly
renamed as Windows Virtual PC was made available for Windows 7
Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. It allows multiple
Windows environments, including Windows XP Mode, to run on the same
machine. Windows XP Mode runs Windows XP in a virtual machine and
redirects displayed applications running in Windows XP to the Windows 7
desktop. Furthermore, Windows 7 supports the mounting of a virtual hard
disk (VHD) as a normal data storage, and the bootloader delivered with
Windows 7 can boot the Windows system from a VHD; however, this
ability is only available in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.
The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) of Windows 7 is also enhanced to
support real-time multimedia application including video playback and 3D
games, thus allowing use of DirectX 10 in remote desktop environments.
The three application limit, previously present in the Windows Vista and
Windows XP Starter Editions, has been removed from Windows 7.
 Open Office 3x
The OpenOffice.org(OOo) software is a freely available, full-featured office
productivity suite.
OOo 3.0 was a major upgrade of an already feature-rich office suite,
and later releases have added more features. If you have used previous
versions of OpenOffice.org, you might want to look over the new
features lists for OOo3.0, OOo3.1 and OOo3.2.
OOos native file format is OpenDocument, an open standard format
that is being adopted by governments worldwide as a required file
format for publishing and accepting documents. OOo can also open
and save documents in many other formats, including those used by
several versions of Microsoft Office.

OOo includes the following components.

1.Writer (word processor):

Writer is a feature-rich tool for creating letters, books, reports,

newsletters, brochures, and other documents. You can insert graphics
and objects from other components into Writer documents. Writer can
export files to HTML, XHTML, XML, Adobes Portable Document
Format (PDF), and several versions of Microsoft Word files. It also
connects to your email client.

2.Calc (spreadsheet):

Calc has all of the advanced analysis, charting, and decision-making

features expected from a high-end spreadsheet. It includes over 300
functions for financial, statistical, and mathematical operations, among
others. The Scenario Manager provides what if analyses. Calc
generates 2-D and 3-D charts, which can be integrated into other OOo
documents. You can also open and work with Microsoft Excel
workbooks and save them in Excel format. Calc can export
spreadsheets to Adobes PDF and to HTML.

3.Impress (presentations):

Impress provides all the common multimedia presentation tools, such

as special effects, animation, and drawing tools. It is integrated with
the advanced graphics capabilities of OOos Draw and Math
components. Slideshows can be further enhanced with Fontworks
special effects text, as well as sound and video clips. Impress is
compatible with Microsofts PowerPoint file format and can also save
your work in numerous graphics formats, including Macromedia Flash
(SWF).
4.Draw (vector graphics):

Draw is a vector drawing tool that can produce everything from simple
diagrams or flowcharts to 3-D artwork. Its Smart Connectors feature
allows you to define your own connection points. You can use Draw to
create drawings for use in any of OOos other components, and you can
create your own clip art and add it to the Gallery. Draw can import
graphics from many common formats and save them in over 20
formats, including PNG, HTML, PDF, and Flash.

5.Base (database):

Base provides tools for day-to-day database work within a simple

interface. It can create and edit forms, reports, queries, tables, views,
and relations, so that managing a connected database is much the
same as in other popular database applications. Base provides many
new features, such as the ability to analyze and edit relationships from
a diagram view. Base incorporates HSQLDB as its default relational
database engine. It can also use dBASE, Microsoft Access, MySQL, or
Oracle, or any ODBC-compliant or JDBC-compliant database. Base also
provides support for a subset of ANSI-92 SQL.

6.Math (formula editor):

Math is OOos formula or equation editor. You can use it to create

complex equations that include symbols or characters not available in
standard font sets. While it is most commonly used to create formulas
in other documents, such as Writer and Impress files, Math can also
work as a standalone tool. You can save formulas in the standard
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) format for inclusion in web
pages and other documents not created by OOo.

The advantages of OpenOffice.org :

Here are some of the advantages of OpenOffice.org over other office

suites:

No licensing fees. OOo is free for anyone to use and distribute at

no cost. Many features that are available as extra cost add-ins in
other office suites (like PDF export) are free with OOo. There are
no hidden charges now or in the future.
 Open source. You can distribute, copy, and modify the software
as much as you wish, in accordance with either of OOos Open
Source licenses.

Cross-platform. OOo3 runs on several hardware architectures

and under multiple operating systems, such as Microsoft
Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris.

Extensive language support. OOos user interface is available

in over 40 languages, and the OOo project provides spelling,
hyphenation, and thesaurus dictionaries in over 70 languages and
dialects. OOo also provides support for both Complex Text Layout
(CTL) and Right to Left (RTL) layout languages (such as Hindi,
Hebrew, and Arabic).

Consistent user interface. All the components have a similar

look and feel, making them easy to use and master.

Integration. The components of OpenOffice.org are well

integrated with one another.

All the components share a common spelling checker and

other tools, which are used consistently across the suite. For
example, the drawing tools available in Writer are also found
in Calc, with similar but enhanced versions in Impress and
Draw.

You do not need to know which application was used to create

a particular file. For example, you can open a Draw file from
Writer.

Granularity. Usually, if you change an option, it affects all

components. However, OOo options can be set at a component
level or even document level.

File compatibility. In addition to its native OpenDocument

formats, OOo includes PDF and Flash export capabilities, as well
as support for opening and saving files in many common formats
including Microsoft Office, HTML, XML, WordPerfect, and Lotus
1-2-3 formats. New in OOo3 (using an extension): the ability to
import and edit some PDF files.

No vendor lock-in. OOo3 uses OpenDocument, an XML

(eXtensible Markup Language) file format developed as an
industry standard by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of
Structured Information Standards). These files can easily be
unzipped and read by any text editor, and their framework is open
and published.

In Linux/KDE, you can use KDocker to have OOo loaded and ready for
use at startup. KDocker is not part of OOo; it is a generic systray app
docker that is helpful if you open OOo often.

Type of document Component Command-line option

Text Writer -writer
Spreadsheet Calc -calc
Presentation Impress -impress

Drawing Draw -draw

Database Base -base
Formula Math -math
Web page Writer -web