The I.T Massive!

This is a follow up article to my Creating Windows 7 Themes article.

Now that we have one or two of our own custom Themes made we can do a really neat thing with them and that is to share them. I am going to show you how to share Themes using my Animals example Theme that I made up, if you would like to download it just click here.  

The first step is to go to the Personalize screen in the Control Panel. This can be done by either clicking Start, Control Panel then clicking Personalization or by right clicking the desktop and clicking Personalize. If you are using my example Theme then your Personalize screen should look something like this.

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In this article I am going to show you how easy it is to create your own custom Windows 7 Themes.

It is easy to create your own custom themes on Windows 7. First off go to the Personalization Screen in the Control Panel. This can be done by either clicking Start, Control Panel then clicking Personalization or by right clicking the desktop and clicking Personalize.

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This is a follow up article on the Windows 7 Beta Styles article I wrote a few months ago. As you will see from the pictures below they are different from the ones in the beta (apart from the Windows 7 fish) and most of them are slide show backgrounds as well. I have also noticed that Microsoft seems to have for now anyway settled on calling them Themes rather than Styles, this may change in the final version of Windows 7 mind you.

Below I have posted the selection screen as well as selected one picture from each set for you to take a look at. Some are really cool pictures while others are quite bizarre.

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One of the new features aimed at businesses is Branch Cache. Branch Cache allows content from remote file servers and web servers to be cashed locally in the branch office. The neat thing is that the data can be cashed on a local sever (Hosted Cache) or can be distributed across Windows 7 client PCs (Distributed Cache).

This means that an employee can download a file stored on the company's intranet at the central office to their computer in a branch office. This file can then be stored using Branch Cache on a server in the branch office so that other users can download it locally on their faster LAN instead of having to go over the slower WAN connection back to the central office.

Branch Cache has a number of configuration options, here are a few examples. You can set permissions so that only authorized users can access the files, files can expire after a set amount of time so that a fresh copy would have to be pulled again from it's original location and you can set the size of the Branch Cache partition on the clients.

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Location-aware printing allows you to set up a default printer for different networks. This is very useful for people who have a laptop that they use in multiple locations, for example at home and also at work. Location-aware printing works by detecting which network you are connected to and selects the correct default printer for that network. This eliminates time wasted when a program such as Microsoft Office struggles away to find a printer that isn't even there and you also don't need to keep changing your print settings every time you change locations. It is simple as hitting ctrl+p and off it prints.

Device Stage is a feature in Windows 7 that displays a special page that lets you access features for your devices such as digital cameras, keyboards, scanners and mice. The device stage page is going to be unique for each device and will be fully customizable by the device vendor. The vendor can put several options on the Device Stage page, for example printer manufacturers could have a link to buy ink cartriges. Other uses could be adding links to support pages, importing data from the device or changing the device's settings. Device Stage can also be used to display information about the device, for example how much it's batteries are charged, how much memory is free or if it is syncing with the PC.

Unfortunatly I do not have a Device Stage device so I can't post screenshots of it yet. If I get one I will show it to you.

There are several enhancements to the Aero interface in Windows 7. The first one I am going to cover is Aero Shake. It's hard for me to demonstrate but rather easy to explain. If you have multiple windows open and you would like to minimize all but one of them, simply click and hold the window near the top (as long as it's not maximized) and move your pointer side to side. This will minimize all the other windows except the one you shook, you can restore all the windows again by repeating the shaking action. It's best to have a mouse to do this, I have found that the shake feature can be a little fiddly on my laptop's trackpad. There is how ever another way of doing the shake action which is simply to use Windows key plus the Home key. Here is some pics of Aero Shake in action.

Before using Aero Shake.

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The calculator has went through it's most significant change ever in Windows 7. It may not be the most exciting new feature but the new functionality is very useful. In this post I will go through some of the new features. I have plenty of screen shots so you can see them in action.

First off let's have a look at what you will be greeted with when you open the calculator.

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Styles (or themes as they are known in the beta) is a new feature to Windows 7. Styles is a set of customization options which consists of a Desktop Background or a set of Desktop Backgrounds in a slideshow (more on that later), the Window Color, Windows Sound Scheme and the Screen Saver. There are several default styles that come with Windows 7. Some are with backgrounds that were in windows Vista and some are completely new. The default ones are:

Windows 7

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