Preview : Windows 7: Application Enhancements

Ever since Windows has been around, especially since the time of Windows 95,
there have a been a number of applications bundled with the OS that have had
their uses. Some of these like Calculator, WordPad and Paint, have always been
around — but never really seen too many changes as the years have gone by. Other
applications like a Movie Maker and a mail client (Outlook Express/Windows
Mail), etc. were introduced later and have had minor changes with each update.

Windows 7 radically changes all of these. All the built-in applications get
extreme makeovers. So much so that at first glance you might wonder if you are
actually running the application you have known for so long or whether it's a
third party one. Another change that you will see is that some of the apps that
you were introduced to in Vista seem to have been removed — but not completely
as you will see. We'll take a look at some of the significant changes in
applications in Win7.

Calculator

This tiny applet that has been around since Windows 1.0 is probably
something that everyone uses very often to do small calculations. Calculator has
not seen any major improvement in all these years — but finally gets a massive
makeover in Windows 7 that makes it much more useful than before.

At the basic level, Calculator looks much like its earlier counterparts,
albeit with some color changes. However, even in this mode, there are some
changes that can really make a huge difference to how you use this app. The
first change is that Calculator maintains a history of the calculations you have
done. And you can browse through these by clicking on the desired one or by
using the arrow buttons on top of the “screen”. Another major change is that you
can even edit a previous calculation in case you made a mistake in any of the
values you entered by simply double clicking on it.

The basic calculator looks similar to the earlier versions.	The history options let you see earlier results as well as edit the calculation itself.

You now also have a number of new modes for it other than the Basic and
Scientific ones that have been around. You now also get a Programmer and a
Statistics mode. Not only these you also get a number of handy tools to perform
common calculations as well.

First, you get a Unit Converter that lets you convert between different units
of different types. For instance, you can select types such as Temperature,
Angle, Speed, Length, Area and many more and select to convert between different
units such as C-F, Meter-Feet, Mile-Km, and more. Next, you also get a nice date
converter that lets you find the difference between two dates or add/remove days
to a date. And finally you get an option to perform some template based
calculations for Gas Mileage, Lease Estimation and Mortgage Estimation. If you
are planning to take a loan to purchase a car or house, this last one can be a
huge timesaver.

Sticky Notes lets you save notes on the desktop.

Paint

This is another app that has been around for ages without any significant
changes. The user interface now looks like that of an Office 2007 application by
the inclusion of the Ribbon control. This lets you work with a much larger
number of tools and has a number of enhancements in what Paint can do. Although
it is not something that you can use for editing photos or very precise
graphics, this is much better than what was there earlier and can be used for
simple jobs in a much easier fashion.

WordPad

Taken as a simple word processer, WordPad too gets the new Office 2007
Ribbon interface to make finding and using features easier. Another enhancement
is that it can now open, edit and save in the new DOCX format as well.

Sticky Notes

This is a new application that, as the name suggests, displays sticky notes
on the screen. You can add as many notes as you wish and move them around,
change their shape and color and remove them when done with.

The new Paint app has a number of new features and a new Ribbon based interface.

Live Replacements

As I mentioned earlier, there are some applications that have simply gone,
starting Windows 7---for instance, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Mail.
However, there's no reason to worry, since all of these and more are now part of
the Windows Live Essentials (WLE) Suite. You can download the installer for WLE
that gives you a number of more applications:

Messenger: The MSN Messenger IM client that lets you chat with friends.

Mail: The replacement for Outlook Express and Windows Mail, lets you check
your POP/IMAP accounts as well as connect to Newsgroups and read RSS feeds.

Photo Gallery: Lets you manipulate photos on your machine as well as upload
them to a gallery on the Internet.

Toolbar: Adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer that gives you a number of
search and other options.

Writer: If you are into writing blogs, this is a must-have application as it
allows you to compose your posts offline and post them directly to your blog.

Family Safety: Controls the content that your children can access on the
Internet.

Silverlight: Installs the Silverlight runtime that lets you view rich
interactive content (such as on the DLF IPL site at www.iplt20.com) Movie Maker:
A replacement for the Windows Movie Maker, it allows you to create home movies
easily.

Your Choice

Many of the other apps such as Media Player and Media Center also get a UI
makeover. However one of the most significant change is that you now have
control over which apps remain installed on your system. In the Release
Candidate for May, you have the option to uninstall built in applications such
as Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Media Center and others. This does
not however, remove their core systems — only their user interfaces, so that
other apps that depend on services that say, Internet Explorer provides, can
continue to function. However, the executable for these applications will be
removed so that there is no way to directly launch them anymore.

All in all, Windows 7 gives you a whole bunch of updated applications as well
as many other new apps that can be installed and uninstalled at your choice. The
Release Candidate shall be out in May, so make sure you do get your hands on it.