Hey, it’s the 2nd week of the 20 4 7 (20 days, 4 weeks of Windows 7)!

One of the nice improvements in Windows 7 is that you get to control those left-and-right Notifications that your PC sends you and that all the Actions are consolidated into one place called Action Center

Notification Area Improvements - Industry-leading security but now with increased control.

We all wish our computers would automatically keep themselves healthy without asking us questions or notifying us every few minutes. Some notifications are important to you; others aren’t. Windows 7 lets you choose which programs can notify you. The Notification Area is streamlined and flexible to give you quick and easy access to what’s important to you.

So here’s an example of what i mean… these days when you buy a new laptop it comes loaded with software that sometimes you don’t even have a clue what they do! and they are all in the Taskbar next to the clock .. so you have a full set of icons that starts dancing and flashing with notifications that sometimes you Just WANT A BREAK!!! in windows 7 you can control which icon you want to keep on the notification area or hide permanently or just displays the notification when you need it… For me per example, the icon of Microsoft Outlook is a Nice icon :o) and i do use it all my day… however i only want it to Shine and notify me when i receive a new Email so i don’t need it all day long… so i control the notification and i reduce the number of icons and notification to those that MATTERS to me!!

And one Final note about Notifications…  The UAC or User Account Control that used to keep asking you to confirm that you want to run a program or task that requires administrator privilege (Normally when you find a SHIELD icon next to a program)… etc ; that Security feature received lots of negative feedback from a user experience point of view when using Windows Vista… not because the security model was not right… actually it reduced TONS of threats on PCs… but the previous User Experience was not very cool to first time users.. so we fixed that in Windows 7… Now you have less notifications and more efficient experience… (but on a side note… if the medicine that prevents diseases tastes bad doesn’t make it un-efficient ;) … now we added some sugar to it :P).

Action Center - Action Center makes it easy to diagnose and correct problems.

Action Center provides information and controls for security, maintenance, and troubleshooting in one place. If there is something that needs my attention, Action Center alerts me and I can then choose if and when to act on this information. You can ask Windows to silence specific notifications so you are not bothered with same information again.

So instead of teaching your non-techie friends and family members about the history of Computers and every msg they need to know about … you can just point them to the FLAG next to the clock … it will have everything they need to worry about :o)

Windows 7, Your PC Simplified!

Ok Amigos… Cheers,

SC