Office Live Team

Windows 7 is showing some promise for the average user. Early reports indicate that it is faster, cleaner and easier to use than windows Vista and that is good news for Microsoft.

What’s a Homegroup

The homegroup, is a feature recently covered on the Windows 7 engineering blog. Essentially, it is an easy to use local area networking and sharing component built-in to Windows 7. It is being designed with the non-technical population in-mind and has some useful features for techies as well.

Here are a few I found interesting:

• Picture frame support – easily send family pictures to digital picture frames
• Media Player Streaming – easily share audio with other W7 users and stream to and from each
• Printer Sharing – automatically share locally attached printers with people in your homegroup
• Security – easily configurable access for homegroup security and protection

Domain Support and Homegroups

Another terrific feature is homegroups for domain-joined computers. This allows telecommuters and corporate systems to be members of both corporate networks and homegroups. This is important because it allows a telecommuter to print, access files and stream audio while at home. And hopefully without the need for calling the company’s systems administrator.

Summary

Looks like Windows 7 and the engineering team are shaping up. I wonder if they will be able to recover from the “bad rap” that Vista has received?