Network Support in Windows 7

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is a union of more than 200 companies which are interested in specifying technologies for exchanging media in home networks. The DLNA specifies transport protocols which are based on HTTP and RTP and sets of media formats. Also DLNA architecture is based on the UPnP specification.

DLNA defines roles for the devices like servers, players, renderers and it also defines the protocols that these devices use to discover each other and communicate with each other. Windows 7 applies the DLNA protocols required for communications and media exchange and it also applies several of the DLNA device roles. Your Windows 7 PC will be able to interoperate with a extensive variety of DLNA certified devices like stereo systems, cell phones, DVRs, TVs, game consoles, etc.

There are different ways in which you could choose to use a Windows 7 PC at home because Windows 7 implements several device roles.

Scenario 1:
If you store all your pictures, music and videos on a Windows 7 PC and you have recently acquired a TV with a DLNA logo then you can browse the media library available on the Windows 7 PC using the TV. You can also use the TV to listen to music, watch the video and pictures stored on the PC. This scenario is already available in Windows XP and Windows Vista using Windows Media Player 11.

Scenario 2:
If you have a Network Attached Storage i.e NAS device on which you store your videos, music and pictures then you can use the NAS device as a DMS. You can find the NAS device using Windows Media Player when you open Windows Media Player on a Windows 7 PC and you can also browse the media library available on the NAS device. You can also use NAS device to listen to music, watch the video and pictures stored on it.

Scenario 3:
If you have a cell phone that is capable of taking pictures and can push the pictures to a Windows 7 PC then you can show the pictures to your friends using the large-screen display of the PC without transferring the files to the PC with a USB thumb drive.

Scenario 4:
If you have a stereo system with the DLNA logo then you can play the songs stored on your computer by using Play To feature. If you have a extensive collection of music which has thousands of songs. Because your collection is big and you prefer to search, organize and select songs using the rich capabilities of the Windows Media Player then you can select the songs by simply pushing them to your stereo system using Play To.

If you also have a NAS device containing an additional collection of music and video then you can use the Windows 7 PC to browse the content on the NAS device and push it to the stereo system.

Microsoft surpasses investor’s expectation in profits

Microsoft announced on Friday that its fiscal first-quarter sales sunk compared with a year ago, but it’s tough moves to cut costs and lay off workers enabled the software company earn a profit that surpasses investors’ expectations. Microsoft, the maker of the Windows operating system — including the new Windows 7 version released Thursday — indicated a net income of $3.57 billion, or 40 cents a share, for the quarter, which culminated on September 30th. Wall Street had expected Microsoft to earn 32 cents a share, quoted a report according to a Thomson Reuters survey.

Microsoft credited part of its rebound to increasing sales of PCs by consumers. While total PC sales were mostly flat in the quarter, compared with a year earlier; consumer sales worldwide hiked by a percentage that was in the mid-single digits. The gains came despite the rise of netbooks, small laptop computers, which have generally used inexpensive versions of Windows XP. Netbooks represented 12 percent of sales to consumers in the quarter, Microsoft added.
The company was aggressive on Windows 7, in part because of thumping advance sales. Indeed, the company deferred $1.47 billion in revenue from presales. Sans that deferral, Microsoft said it would have pocketed 52 cents per share in the first quarter instead of 40 cents. The financial results were revealed before the market opened, and investors quoted Microsoft’s shares up more than 5 percent Friday, to $28. 02.

They expected to see some positive impact from Windows 7, but it is the first it has been crystallized in the numbers. Microsoft hopes to benefit not only from rising demand but also from increasing prices for consumers. A netbook maker will shell out more to install Windows 7 than it would have for Windows XP. And in developed countries, Microsoft has stroked off the low-cost Windows Home Basic, forcing a shift to the more expensive Windows 7 Home Premium. Sales of business computers may be scanty, but Microsoft said it saw some indications that companies would start to replace older machines with Windows 7 models over the next few years.

The software giant reported total revenue of $12.92 billion for the quarter, a 14 percent decline from a year back. Reported sales of Windows sunk by 39 percent because Microsoft will not count revenue on computers sold with the hope of a free upgrade to Windows 7 until the current quarter. Adding the delayed sales back in, Windows sales were $4.1 billion, down 4 percent from a year ago. The company’s sales of software for corporate servers were the same from last year at $3.4 billion. Sales of Office and other business software sunk by 11 percent; to $4.4 billion. That is a lower decline than some investors had thought it to be. Analysts were also contended that the sales at Microsoft’s entertainment and device business were also low for the year at $1.9 billion, given leverage by better-than-expected Xbox game sales.

Despite the large investment in its Bing search engine, revenue from Microsoft’s online operations went down by 6 percent, to $490 million. That unit was Microsoft’s only division to squander money, and the loss of $480 million was 50 percent greater than last year.
Microsoft gave guidance in very huge strokes for the rest of fiscal 2010. It said sales of Windows would be associated with growth in the PC market. Sales of Office and other business products are expected to fall behind the overall PC market. Online ad sales are to commensurate or exceed the online market. Server software sales are expected to grow a little faster than server shipments. And sales of Xbox consoles, games and other consumer devices are likely to be low next year.

Adding and changing home pages to Windows 7 Internet Explorer 8

Windows 7 contains Internet Explorer 8 which gives you the facility to browse Web pages anywhere on the Internet. This latest version of the Microsoft Internet browser has all the new and greatest features for helping you find, visit and retrieve any information on Internet that might interest you.

To launch Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7, all you need to do is click the IE8 icon on the desktop or click the Internet Explorer Quick Launch button on the Windows 7 taskbar. You can also Internet Explorer 8 from the 'Start' menu. Now you type the Website's address which is also known as URL in the address bar of the IE8 window then press Enter.

When you click the Home button in Internet Explorer 8 which is the button sporting an image of a small house then the browser opens the Web page that is listed as the home page. Home page is the start page which the browser goes to each time you launch it. Now if you want to change this home page then navigate to the Web page you want to use as your new home page and click the drop-down button attached to the Home button. Now choose Add or Change Home Page from the button’s drop-down menu. Choosing this option opens the Add or Change Home Page dialog box. Now before you click the Yes button to close this dialog box you need to click the 'Use This Webpage as Your Only Home Page' option.

You can have more than one Web page designated as a home page In Internet Explorer 8 and therefore assigned to the additional home page tabs. Now, if you want to add another Web page as a home page to the IE8 then open the Website's page that you want to add as a home page in Windows 7 Internet Explorer 8 and click the 'Add This Webpage to Your Home Page' option in the 'Add or Change Home Page' dialog box and click 'Yes'.

Now let us take an example that you want to add Google home page to the Internet Explorer 8. When the Google page is displayed then click the 'Add This Webpage to Your Home Page' option button, whenever you launch the Internet Explorer 8, it will automatically display both the MSN.com and Google page in different tabs.

In this way you can have a quick look at the latest gossip and news on both the websites before switching to the Google tab to perform the next Web search. After creating an additional home page, Internet Explorer 8 then adds a tab for this additional home page when you next click the Home button and it automatically appears to the right side of the first home tab every time you open this Internet browser. Now you ca easily open one of the home pages by clicking its tab or selecting the page with the Quick Tabs button.

Now if you want to remove any of the home page and its tab from Internet Explorer 8 then you have to first choose 'Remove from the Home' button’s drop-down menu and then from the submenu, click the page to remove Home Page, Home Page (2), Home Page (3) and so on. Now click 'Yes' in the 'Delete Home Page' dialog box to confirm the removal of the page.

How TO Make Windows 7 Better & More Better?

Here are a few tips and tricks you can use to make this great Windows even better.
I know you liked the new Windows 7 taskbar a lot but something was missing in . Guess what, now you can pin programs to the Start menu. But don’t forget the Quick Launch bar, where you could keep icons for programs. You won’t easily find Quick Launch bar in Windows 7, but there is a way to get it back. The Quick Launch folder is located at the hidden system folder location:

C:\Users\(user-name)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
Once you get the Quick Launch bar on your taskbar, you can drag programs to it as you did in Vista.
Even though Microsoft redesigned the new taskbar, but we know some people don’t like it. They’d prefer to have the old Vista/XP look and behavior, where the taskbar uses less screen space. If you’re one of those , it’s easy to change the taskbar so it will look like similar to the old look.

1. Right-click the Start button and select Properties.
2. Click the Taskbar tab.
3. Select the Use Small Icons check box and click Apply.

If you don’t like the way Windows 7 combines icons for all instances of an application, you can change that, too. On the same tab, click the down arrow on the Taskbar Buttons box and select Combine When Taskbar Is Full.

This dialog box also enables you to pick the taskbar location on the screen (bottom, top, left, or right), customize which icons appear in the notification area (system tray), and decide whether to temporarily minimize all open windows when you place your mouse on the far end (or bottom) of the taskbar

If you’re running Windows 7 with two or more monitors, you’ll be glad to know that multiple-monitor support has been enhanced. One thing we really like about Windows 7 is that when we connect to it via Remote Desktop from another computer, it doesn’t rearrange all icons as Vista often did with multiple monitors. However, one thing Microsoft didn’t build into Windows 7 that some of us were hoping for is the ability to set different wallpapers on different monitors.

However, there is an application called Display-Fusion. The free version offers you multiple wallpaper support, and the paid version, which costs $20 less than UltraMon, gives you multiple taskbars and window management features. We ’ve installed it on two Windows 7 computers and it works great.
Aero Snap is a new feature in Windows 7, which causes your application windows to automatically snap into a pre-configured place when you move them to the edges of the screen. Drag a window to the far right, and it will size itself to fill exactly half the screen. Drag it to the top corner and it will maximize to fill the whole screen. This can be handy, but it can also be annoying if you prefer that your windows stay the size you made them. Luckily, you can easily turn Snap off. Here’s how:
1. Click Start and select Control Panel.
2. Click Ease of Access Center.
3. Click Make the Mouse Easier to Use.
4. Select the Prevent Windows From Being Automatically Arranged When Moved To The Edge Of The Screen check box and click OK.