Windows 7 instruction book

You are strongly advised to provide one. In the next screen, you will be asked to enter a product key to activate Windows 7.

You will also be asked to select a way to update Windows. Next, you will set up the current date and time, and finally, if your computer has a network card, Windows 7 will prompt you to select your current location see Figure ; wireless network users will be asked to select a wireless network to connect to.

Choose a location that best describes the environment you are in. You are now ready to explore Windows 7 see Figure However, behind the familiar UI lies a more powerful and versatile operating system.

Subsequent chapters will cover some of the new features in more detail, but here are some of the most prominent new features in Windows 7. Windows 7 is designed with touchscreen support, especially multitouch, in mind. As touchscreen computers are still not common, this book will not discuss the touch capability of Windows 7. The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a collection of six applications that are optimized for touch interactions. It consists of three games and three Microsoft Surface applications that have been recreated for Windows 7.

These applications are:. A game utilizing physics where you can use gestures to rotate gears, fans, seesaws, and other objects. Perhaps the most outstanding feature in Windows 7 is the new taskbar. The quick-launch area that most Windows XP and Vista users are so used to is now gone.

In place of it is the ability to pin your applications icons in the taskbar for easy access, regardless of whether the application is itself running. Sadly, the classic Start menu has also been disabled in Windows 7. Hopefully, Microsoft will turn it back on in a future service pack, or determined hackers will find a way to replace it. Figure shows the new taskbar in Windows 7 with several application icons in it.

As these applications are used often, they are given permanent spots in the taskbar for more information about pinning, see the section Pinning Applications to the Taskbar. As you can see in Figure , the Media Player application does not have the rectangular border around it—this signifies that the application is not running currently.

In the taskbar is another button known as the Show desktop shortcut. The Show desktop shortcut is the button on the extreme right of the taskbar see Figure Another cool new feature in Windows 7 is Aero Peek. Aero Peek displays live previews of active applications when you move the mouse over the application icon in the taskbar. Figure shows Aero Peek in action when the mouse hovers over the IE icon in the taskbar. Aero Peek requires an Aero-capable video card and a Windows 7 edition that supports Aero.

Aero Shake and Aero Snap will work on any Windows 7 system. Windows displays the live previews of all running instances of IE. When the mouse hovers over one of the live previews, the selected window appears, and the rest of the windows turn transparent. To select the window, simply click the live preview. When an application has too many open windows, the title of each window will be displayed in a list instead of live preview thumbnails. You will notice that all other windows will now be minimized, leaving the current window.

To get all the other windows back to their respective states, perform the same shaking action again and they should now all appear again. How many times have you tried to arrange multiple windows on your desktop so that you see the windows side-by-side? In Windows 7, when you drag a window to the left side of the screen, the window is automatically docked onto the left of the screen see Figure , occupying half the screen.

Likewise, when dragged to the right, the window will be docked to the right. When dragged to the top, the window will be maximized. Besides dragging, Windows 7 provides several shortcuts see Table for window management. Microsoft first introduced gadgets in Vista. In Windows 7, gadgets are not confined to the sidebar which itself was docked to one side of your screen in Vista but are free to roam about on your desktop see Figure This time, both of them were updated to use the new ribbon interface that was introduced in Office Besides the Paint and WordPad applications, another longtime built-in Windows application has also received some new improvements.

The Calculator now has two additional modes in addition to the Standard and Scientific modes : Programmer and Statistics see Figure Besides the two new modes, the calculator also allows you to perform conversion tasks such as unit and date conversions.

It also provides worksheets for you to calculate mortgages, vehicle leases, and fuel economy see Figure In this chapter, you have seen the various editions of Windows 7 and the system requirements that you need to satisfy in order to run it.

Over the years, Microsoft has streamlined the installation process—and Windows 7 is no exception. Windows 7 performs exceedingly well, and stays out of your way thanks to a less naggy UAC.

In the following chapters, you will learn more about each of the new features of Windows 7 and how you can use each of them to your advantage. Skip to main content. If you intend to use either of the first two methods, be sure your computer can boot from a DVD most newer computers support booting from a DVD drive.

With no floppy disk inserted and a clean hard disk, try the DVD drive next. Installation takes 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the speed of your machine. Refer to the following sections if you have questions about any steps in this process.

Note: Windows 7 automatically applies the NTFS format to any disk partition upon which it is installed during a clean installation. If you're installing into an empty partition and you can boot an operating system that is supported for the purpose of Setup Windows Vista or XP , just boot up, insert the DVD and choose Install Now from the resulting dialog box. Then you can follow the installation step-by-step procedure.

If Windows doesn't detect the DVD automatically upon insertion, you must run the Setup program, setup. The setup. After the Setup routine starts, you can follow the installation procedure step by step.

You can now download Windows 7 product guide directly from Microsoft servers! Though there are lots of information about windows 7 on the internet, you may still like to have a concise windows 7 Guide for offline reference. Realizing this, Microsoft has released a Windows 7 guide , which gives you an overview of all the features in Windows 7.

This Windows 7 guide can be read and understood by every computer user as microsoft has taken care to avoid the technical jargon. The guide provides a detailed look at the several new and improved features in Windows 7.

It has been designed to help every PC user in understanding how Windows 7 simplifies everyday tasks, works the way you want and makes new things possible. While the XPS format is Download Windows guide from here and get to know everything you wanted to know about Windows 7, from this free guide.