Andre’s Windows 7 posts on Notebooks.com:

A Look at the Windows 7 Editions: If you’re trying to figure out which version of Windows 7 is right for you this is a great place to start. This guide covers everything from editions and versions to pricing and upgrade paths.

How to Install Windows 7: This guide walks you through the installation process highlighting important steps and providing pictures to guide you through installing Windows 7.

How to Upgrade to Windows 7: If you aren’t installing from scratch then this guide is for you. It contains a walkthrough of an “in-place” upgrade and information about how to fix compatibility issues.

How to Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7: Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 brings many improvements but it’s not as easy as an upgrade from Vista. This guide will provide you with tips to make it easier.

Using Windows Easy Transfer in Windows 7: Windows Easy Transfer makes moving your files and settings from an old computer to a new one easy. This guide walks you through how to use Windows Easy Transfer to get your files to your windows 7 computer.

A Guided Tour of Windows 7 for New Users: If this is your first time looking at Windows 7 than this walk through is a must. Andre highlights the changes and helps you find out where things have moved to in the new operating system.

Using the Improved Taskbar and Start Menu in Windows 7: Some of the biggest changes users will notice in Windows 7 are on the Taskbar and in the Start Menu. Check out all of the changes and how to use them to your advantage.

Using the Windows 7 Desktop – Fun Time Savers: This guide explores the additional time savers and “pizzazz” that the Windows 7 Desktop brings to your new computer.

Windows Explorer – What’s new in Windows 7: Another area in Windows 7 that has changed significantly is Windows Explorer. Explorer is what you see when you click on My Computer and is generally how you interact with files on your computer. Come learn about the refreshing cleaner look it has in Windows 7.

A Tour: Windows 7 Desktop, Windows Explorer and Control Panel: This tour will quickly get you up to speed on some of the improvements found in Windows 7 and give you a better understanding of how to navigate the new operating system.

Improved Windows 7 Applets: Come learn how the included productivity apps in Word can be used. This guide includes a look at; the Scenic Ribbon, WordPad, Paint, Calculator, XPS Viewer and Sticky Notes in Windows 7.

Networking Made Easy with HomeGroups in Windows 7: In past versions of Windows setting up a home network to share files, printers and more was an involved process. Now, with HomeGroups in Windows 7, networking your computers is easier than ever and this guide shows you how it’s done.

Improved Recovery Options in Windows 7: Past versions of Windows have included the ability to use a Recovery Console to fix some computer problems but most of the time it didn’t work well. Windows 7 has an improved Recovery Console that can help you repair startup, do a System Restore, recover from backup backup and more. Come look at these repair options in more detail.

How To Do Practically Anything in Windows 7 is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

Scenic Ribbon

The Scenic Ribbon in Windows 7 exposes frequently used features for more intuitive access, increasing your productivity by reducing the need to hunt through menus. It’s similar to the ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007, with a user interface that consists of an application menu, a quick-access toolbar, a ribbon control of contextual tabs, mini-toolbars (or chunks), and style galleries.

WordPad supports richer options for editing text and compatibility with Microsoft Office

WordPad

Now more like a Word 2007 express, featuring the popular Scenic Ribbon, WordPad still is basic in its capabilities, but for persons who need just the fundamentals, WordPad in Windows 7 provides some productive capabilities you can appreciate. Improvements that users will most look forward to include highlighting, line breaks, additional text colours, bullets, indents and print preview enhancements in addition to picture insertion and zooming capabilities. WordPad in Windows 7 also supports some recent additions that became available with Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, the file formats: Office Open XML, OpenDocument text and Office 2007′s default XML Document formats are supported in WordPad. There is only one feature I would have loved to see in this update: spell check.

Paint comes with a rich collection of shapes, here is a Mothers Day Card I am working on

Paint

Paint also inherits Office Fluent UI, featuring a gorgeous presentation. Some new features include media paint brushes and the ability to easily pick/edit colours and shapes. There are some additional options that make working with illustrations easier such as options for transparency and opacity. Measurement options have been improved with the ability to zoom in and out, display a ruler, grid lines and full screen mode. The default file format Paint now saves in is .PNG (Portable Network Graphics) which provides better quality for your images. Controls in Paint are touch-ready, so you can even use your finger to paint and choose colors or shapes.

Calculator supports a wide range of modes for mathematical operations

Calculator

Calculator has been significantly enhanced with richer options and modes available for Standard, Scientific, Duration between two periods, add or subtract a period of time, gas mileage, lease estimation, mortgage estimation, unit conversion and many more. The new calculation options conveniently pop out from the left side when invoked. The interface itself looks a lot like a traditional calculator, with big bold bright buttons; this should be for those using a Touch enabled PC.

Viewing fixed documents in the new XPS Viewer is even more flexible.

XPS Viewer

With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft developed the XPS Document format, (XML Paper Specification) for viewing, saving, sharing, digitally signing and protection of fixed document content. In Vista XPS documents could only be viewed through Internet Explorer. Windows 7 provides a dedicated application just for XPS documents supporting all of the same functionality found in the previous version such as signing a document, adding permissions, search and viewing the document at different zoom rates. Windows 7 allows you to create XPS documents in any program you can print from, but viewing, signing and setting permissions can only be done through the XPS viewer. One of the nice advantages of XPS is it takes advantage of the graphics subsystem first introduced in Vista which allows high quality output when documents are viewed at high zoom rates maintaining full fidelity. In Windows 7 XPS Documents can be viewed in full-screen mode along with an interactive Thumbnail mode which dynamically creates a set of page ranges when you zoom over the thumbnails; this makes navigation and searching through long documents easier. You can also preview XPS documents within Windows Explorer or Microsoft Office Outlook preview panes.

Sticky Notes are fun to use.

Sticky Notes

The Windows Vista Sidebar provides a Notes Gadget application, this feature in Windows 7 is now a dedicated application called ‘Sticky Notes’ which provides better Ink support for Tablet PC users and text input. You can paste text into Sticky Notes, resize them on the desktop, and use colours to personalize or organize your Sticky Notes. When you upgrade from Vista, your Gadget Notes are automatically imported into Sticky Notes.

The Windows Team has promised to update these applications more regularly. Its really nice to see Windows 7 giving users more functionality out of the box, other key benefits too will be exposed to developers since the Scenic Ribbon is now a core part of the Windows platform, expect to see more third party applications in the near future utilize it.

Improved Windows 7 Applets is a post by Andre from Notebooks.com.