Windows 7 gets the basics right. Here's what you need to know
about the new OS.
Harry McCracken, PC World
Monday, October 19, 2009 2:00 pM


The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar ?
especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the
Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and
the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

Windows 7's revamped Taskbar introduces several new
features and gives users much more control over how it looks.

The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text
labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can
keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces
Taskbar clutter. If you don't like it, you can shrink the icons
and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs
by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7
eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the
Taskbar. Drag an app's icon from the Start menu or desktop to
the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch
the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You
can also organize icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new
positions.

To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is
running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon ?
subtle, in fact, that figuring out [CONJUNCTION] the app is
running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between
two icons for running apps.

In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an
application's Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view
known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows
open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7's version of this feature is slicker and more efficient: Hover the pointer on
an icon, and thumbnails of the app's windows glide into position
above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you're
looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the
thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7's Taskbar is a feature called
Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones
you get when you right-click within various Windows
applications, except that you don't have to be inside an app to
use them. Internet Explorer 8's Jump List, for example, lets you
open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate
stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently
visited Web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists,
too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating
them.

Other Windows 7 interface adjustments are minor, yet so
sensible that you may wonder why Windows didn't include them
all along. Shove a window into the left or right edge of the
screen and it'll expand to fill half of your desktop. Nudge another
into the opposite edge of the screen, and it'll expand to occupy
the other half. That makes comparing two windows' contents
easy. If you nudge a window into the top of the screen, it will
maximize to occupy all of the display's real estate.
(Adapted from
http://www.pcworld.com/article/172602/windows_7_review.html)

Minister calls for wider fl exible working rights

British government ministers are considering giving all
employees the right to ask for fl exible working hours "from
the beginning" of a new job as part of plans to encourage a
fundamental shift in working habits.
The Work and Pensions Secretary, Yvette Cooper, says her
offi ce is working with employers and organisations such as
the federation of small businesses to draw up new ways of
supporting men as well as women and non-parents as well
as parents working more fl exible hours.

The current rules are limited to parents of children under 16
and carers, and Cooper wants to extend them. "You want
people to offer fl exible working from the beginning and
we need to look again at how the legislation can support
different ways of doing that," she said.

"There will be some areas where it's not possible to fi t
round particular school hours or particular things where the
nature of the business makes it hard - but what you need
is the cultural change for everybody to think differently."
Cooper's proposals come as the government announced
that fathers will be given the right to six months' paternity
leave.

There will be a legal right to take the mother's place at
home for the last three months of a nine-month maternity
break; they would receive £123 a week in statutory pay.
Fathers would then be entitled to take a further three
months' unpaid leave. The move was criticised by some
business leaders.

(From: The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010 -slightly adapted)

Companies in the rich world are confronted with a rapidly
ageing workforce. Nearly one in three American workers
will be over 50 by 2012, and America is a young country
compared with Japan and Germany. China is also ageing
rapidly, thanks to its one-child policy. This means that
companies will have to learn how to manage older workers
better.
Most companies are remarkably ill-prepared. There was a
fl icker of interest in the problem a few years ago but it was
snuffed out by the recession. The management literature
on older workers is a mere molehill compared with the
mountain devoted to recruiting and retaining the young.
Companies are still stuck with an antiquated model for
dealing with ageing, which assumes that people should
get pay rises and promotions on the basis of age. They
have dealt with the burdens of this model by periodically
"downsizing" older workers or encouraging them to take
early retirement. This has created a dual labour market for
older workers, of cosseted insiders on the one hand and
unemployed or retired outsiders on the other.
But this model cannot last. The number of young people,
particularly those with valuable science and engineering
skills, is shrinking. And governments are raising retirement
ages and making it more diffi cult for companies to shed
older workers, in a desperate attempt to cope with their
underfunded pension systems.
Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition [adapted]