New features of Windows 7

New features of Windows 7

One new networking feature of Windows 7 that aggregates data from multiple sources into a single folder view. This could also be called a virtual folder. Actually, it is an indexed view of multiple data sources. Because of the new library functionality, many of the common user folders in Windows 7 have been renamed. In Windows Vista you had Documents, Downloads, Photos, Videos, and Music. In Windows 7, these folders have been renamed and now you have Personal Documents, Personal Downloads, Personal Photos, Personal Videos, and Personal Music. (Nash, 2008, 76-89)

Yes, in other words, all the folders in a user's home directory have been renamed with the word Personal in front of them. As I said, there is a reason for this and that reason is to allow us to use libraries and to distinguish between public and personal (private) documents.

Besides these personal document folders, each Windows 7 computer is going to have public folder such as Public Documents. To reiterate, the purpose of Libraries is to join together these personal and public documents into a single documents directory (as well as any other libraries that you create).

Thus, the default Libraries in Windows 7 are:

Documents: made up of Personal Documents and Public Documents

Downloads: made up of Personal Downloads and Public Downloads

Music: made up of Personal Music and Public Music

Photos: made up of Personal Photos and Public Photos

Videos: made up of Personal Videos and Public Videos

To me, the best thing about Windows 7 Libraries is that you can create your own libraries. How do you do it? Easy. In explorer view, just go to your Libraries, right-click, then click on New - Library. The Network and Sharing options have been moved to the Choose homegroup and sharing options window (which we will look at in a minute) and the left navigation options have been moved to other menu windows. I also think that the view your active networks section now looks much nicer and easier to understand.

Personally, I wish that there were more technical networking details shown on the Network and Sharing window. However, I am a technical networking guy and that is likely why I feel that way. I can see where perhaps Microsoft would want to shield less experienced users from technical network details BranchCache is a big win for branch office users and IT Admins. With BrachCache, when remote Windows 7 users access file or Intranet content on a Windows 2008 R2 server at the headquarters, that data is downloaded to the remote branch. The second time that the same Windows 7 PC, or a different Windows 7 PC, needs that data or Intranet content, access to it is much faster because it has already been cached. (Nash, 2008, 76-89)

BranchCache can operate in two modes - Hosted Cache or Distributed Mode. With Hosted Cache, a Windows 2008 R2 server at the branch office is the central caching server for that ...