A Closer Look At Windows 7:Putting Windows 7 to the test

The arrival of Vista was marred by technical problems and, despite Microsoft's claims to the contrary, is widely seen as getting a lukewarm reception from companies and individuals.

Many found problems with early applications and many drivers for basic hardware such as printers and scanners were not working.

Windows 7 is available as pre-release software for anyone wanting to download it, install it and try it out.

This "Release Candidate" as it is called, is an almost finished version, but it is not guaranteed to run smoothly.

Below are some of the new features that caught Click's attention.

Multi-touch Clearing desktop Live search Data protection

Super taskbar Desktop backgrounds Virtual PC mode

The task bar, which has remained pretty much the same since Windows 95, has been combined with the Quick Launch bar to become the Super Bar.

This has no text and simply lists icons for the programs already running and ones a user might like to run. Hovering the mouse over the icons brings up thumbnails of different windows.

Icons can be shuffled to suit individual needs, and anyone preferring the old view, can switch it back on.

Resizing windows is easier - just drag them to the edge of the screen and they will automatically either fill half or the whole screen. Shake a window and it minimises everything else in the background - shake it again and it all comes back. Move your mouse to the right edge of the screen and click to minimise all windows.

Multi-touch means that gestures, rather than one finger, can be used on a touchpad or screen to control what happens. A pinch might close applications and pictures can be expanded using fingers moving diagonally away from each other.

However, the only applications currently supporting this feature are Internet Explorer and Microsoft Viewer. Also, very few laptops are ready to be used in this way.

Microsoft is expecting manufacturers and software developers to start building multi-touch functions into software and hardware soon.

There are some wonderfully bizarre pre-installed desktop backgrounds. The user can also take a group of their own favourite snaps and get the desktop to display them as a background slideshow.

The Live Search feature has been improved. Looking up files and folders in the computer produces results neatly categorised by where they are on the PC. Then, by clicking on the file's heading, the user is taken straight to its location. Refined search filters can also be created.

This will open a new window with an XP desktop which can be used to run these programs. However, not all graphic cards will support this feature.

The Bitlocker application lets a user encrypt internal hard-disks and portable flash drives so the data stored is only accessible with a password. This feature was available on Vista, but only in the software's Ultimate edition.

Want To Become A Detective? Look No Further Than Facebook -Facebook Users Turn Into Detectives

Previously in ferbaruary,a central Maine police department credited the social networking Web site Facebook for helping solve a vandalism case.Auburn police said that three teenagers broke into the spa at a Hilton Garden Inn. Police posted images from the hotel's surveillance video on the department's Facebook page, which they had set up Jan. 29.Detectives then received several anonymous tips from Facebook users who recognized the boys.

This is not an isolated incident,where Facebook had given a helping hand in solving crime.Most recently,When Mary Chapman learned that two of her husband's work trucks had been burgled, her first reaction wasn't to call the police. It was to sign on to Facebook.She cracked open her laptop, logged on to the popular social networking site and sent off a quick message to a friend down the street.

A few minutes later, her friend forwarded that message to another friend in the neighborhood who, surprisingly, had noticed something strange in the middle of the day.The women put two and two together and, within a matter of hours, they'd singled out the suspect, confronted him and amicably settled the entire affair. The police had yet to come up with a name.

"I really don't think at this point they would have figured out who committed this crime," Chapman said. "If it was not for Facebook we would not have our items or our vehicles repaired."

The suspect was an 18-year-old from the neighborhood who, she said, impulsively looted her husband's trucks after a disagreement with his mother. The Chapmans ultimately downgraded the charge after the teen apologized and agreed to make amends.

Chapman said the police were a great help, but she still credits Facebook for recovering about $1,000 worth of equipment (a radar detector, GPS device and XM radio) and other damages.

Recognizing Facebook's potential to quickly sift through and reach out to others, crime victims and good Samaritans from all over the world have started to use the site to play digital detective, often with great success.

In Another case, Carla Pillo Mote a resourceful advertising executive in Philadelphia recently put her social networks to work to track down a man who drunkenly pilfered her laptop, taxes and wallet. According to the media blog MediaBistro.com, Mote was having drinks with a friend in March, when a visibly intoxicated man sat down beside her. After the bartender refused to serve him any more drinks, he took off.

The man's behavior seemed a little bizarre to her all night, so when Mote got ready to leave and realized her laptop bag was missing, it didn't take her long to identify a main suspect.She asked the bartender for the man's name (he'd paid with a credit card) and then headed for Facebook.

Explaining that she'd been robbed, she put out a "Facebook APB," asking for information on the mystery man who she thought stole her laptop.

She filed a report with the police as well. But to make a long story short, Mote's Facebook sleuthing (bolstered by some digging by her friends) led her to the front door of the drunken thief and, eventually, her computer.

Laptop in hand, Mote called off the police and, according to MediaBistro, updated her profile with: "the perp and i are now friends on facebook."

Facebook Joins Law Enforcement

For victims of crime, Facebook provides a way to supplement a police department's investigation. But that's not to say that police officers themselves aren't also using the tool. In Auburn, Maine, police set up a Facebook page in January, after a group of vandals broke into a local hotel and caused about a thousand dollars worth of damage.

On camera, the mischief-makers were caught ripping tiles off the walls of the hotel spa and throwing them in the water and down the hall.Soon after the police launched the Facebook page featuring photos of the criminals, they started receiving anonymous tips."Within 48 hours, we had them ID'd and charged with criminal mischief," said Deputy Chief Jason Moen, adding that the vandals were three boys, ages 15 and 16.

In their town of about 23,000 people, he said the Facebook page is "more than catching criminals. It's another way to communicate with our folks."

From Catching a rapist,to finding lost stuff online,Facebook is helping those people in need of immediate help.

Demigod Hits PC This Week-Demigod Hands on Review and Developer Walkthrough

Enter Demigod, a genre-bending title where you play as an incarnation of a deity, waging war against human armies and their respective godly leaders. I recently went hands-on with the game and got a taste of what it's like to wield the power of a god.

Demigod isn't what you might expect. The latest game from Gas Powered Games doesn't follow the classic real-time strategy formula like Supreme Commander did. And while Demigod is a real-time strategy game, it's also more of an arena-based combat game. In it, players control giant, powerful figures called demigods in the quest to destroy the opposing team's fortress while at the same time defending their own. It's a game of momentum, where you press the attack to its limits and then fall back at the right moment to recover. As such, Demigod has an ebb-and-flow to it, not unlike a battle for field position in a football game.

while godly avatars play a big role, they only make up a small portion of the on-field forces. Enemy and friendly soldiers are almost constantly flowing out of portals on the map, creating skirmishes all over the battlefield. During my hands-on time, I'd often follow my forces into battle, either helping them -- or perhaps using them as a diversion -- when we finally clashed with the enemy. Such are the decisions a god must make.

Even the length of a Demigod match alludes to the almost sports-like nature of it, as Gas Powered Games head Chris Taylor told us that it takes about 35 or 40 minutes to play a match. He then proceeded to show us just that, launching into a multiplayer game where the other players were controlled by the computer. So what he showed off was basically a bot match, but there is a single-player campaign that sounds like something like Unreal Tournament. The plot is that there's an opening in the pantheon of the gods, and the head god is having the many demigods (half human, half god beings) battle it out in matches to see who gets the big promotion.

Not all demigods are created equal. From what I've seen so far, none of them are, actually. That's not to say they aren't balanced, but they all certainly look and play differently. One diminutive demigod, the Torchbearer, acts primarily as a caster, wielding a combination of fire and ice spells -- seemingly best used in an assisting role to your army's A.I.-controlled forces rather than as a shock trooper. The other, the Rook -- the towering behemoth who's ostensibly become the poster child for the game -- is suited for aggressive players who like to wade into the thick of battle and just crush things under their heel. And while these demigods differ in their playstyles, both left me feeling disappointed, as they can't control their minions. Then again, both are classified as Assassin demigods -- meaning they play like typical action-RPG characters. In other words, you control a singular main character and use a variety of special abilities in combat to best an army of foes. Another demigod type, the General, can direct troops on the battlefield, but I didn't get a chance to check them out in my hands-on time. To me, though, Assassins feel a little shallow; their fates are too tied to the whims of A.I.-controlled soldiers.

The gameplay revolves on you controlling your demigod and going forth to attack the enemy forces and defenses in the goal of destroying the enemy fortress. To assist you, there are portals that spew out a stream of minions known as creeps. You can't directly control the creeps, but they surge forward and attack enemy forces and fortifications on sight. The enemy has its own creeps, too, so the battlefield is crawling with creatures and demigods.

As your demigod kills creeps, inflicts damage on enemy defensive towers, and attacks opposing demigods, it generates gold and experience. This is critical, because the entire point of a match is that demigods become more powerful the longer the battle rages. It basically escalates into an epic brawl, and even the creeps will evolve to become larger and tougher.

The challenge will be to know how far to press an attack. You must surge forward, inflict damage, then fall back to heal back at your fortress. Falling back also gives you the benefit of using that hard-won gold to purchase items and upgrades that make your demigod more formidable; healing potions will let you stay up front longer, armor can make your demigod more durable, and so on. You can also level up and acquire new powers and abilities for your demigod, like attack spells. When you're rested and ready, it's time to press forward and attack. If you die, you're penalized a number of ways; you can drop valuable items that the enemy can pick up and use, but more importantly, you have to wait to respawn. The designers are still balancing things, but let's say the battle is at a critical moment and you're killed and have to wait 20 seconds to get back into the fray. Those 20 seconds could spell the difference.

Get The Game's Look And Feel By Watching These Review and Gameplay Videos