Antivirus Programs compatible with Action Center

When you first install Windows 7, you'll get a popup balloon message telling you that you need to find an antivirus program online

Once you've installed a compatible package, the message will go away and you'll see a message in the Action Center telling you that "Virus protection" is On

However, Windows 7 do not detect every Antivirus program installed, it's because the antivirus must communicate with operating system and tell it's status.

The packages should also hook into the Windows 7 update mechanism and let you know when your virus definitions are out of date.

List of Antiviruses compatible with Windows 7 Beta Action Centre:

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
Avira AntiVir Personal Edition
Norton AntiVirus 2009
Avast! AntiVirus Home
Kapersky Anti-Virus 2009

Note: The fact that a antivirus is not compatible with Action Centre doesn't mean that it will not work on Windows 7, it just means that the Antivirus can't communicate with AC.
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Uncle Laz : My experience with Windows 7

I'll start with the fact that I really hate Vista, and honestly I wasn't expecting too much from new Windows 7. I have mid-end laptop Asus Z99He, it's system specs are:
Intel Celeron M 520 1,6 Ghz
Intel 950 chipset with integrated GMA 950 graphics adapter
WiFi, bluetooth, 80 Gb Hard drive, and a 14,1" screen.

Windows Vista was unreal to bare, it was very slow.
And, like I mentioned, I was expecting the same thing from Windows 7, and I was wrong :)
Even in Beta stage, this operating system feels so confortable on my laptop, that I even erased Windows XP partition and made Windows 7 as my main system.

I will name the things that surprised me most in Windows 7:
- It has everything. The only thing that I installed for hardware support was hotkey utility, everything else was detected by Windows 7 with proper drivers installed. And actually Windows update was providing me with driver update along with system ones.
- Windows Management. It's so easy to manage my windows, that I even can work freely without a mouse
Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow docks a windows on left/right half of the screen;
Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes current windows
- Monitor Management. I'm studying at University, and I was about to make a presentation, I connected the projector, pressed Win+P, and selected prefered monitor mode. That's all, few clicks and your system is ready to work with multiple monitors
- Windows Aero works with no lag on my morally old chipset, and hell yeah, I even watch HDTV movies without lag or something
- Low space requirements is something that I really apreciate in this system, I removed DVD Maker and Internet Explorer 8, and along with all programs and pagefile my Windows 7 uses up to 8 GB on my hard drive, without touching the install ISO or something, everything is customizable at user level
- Amazing performance, even in Beta stage runs like hell
- Cool design makes every minute with Windows 7 pleasant
and much, much more

Honestly I'm impressed, I hope that M$ will keep this pace and will release RTM version soon.
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How to restore quicklaunch in Windows 7

You might have noticed that the old faithful Quick Launch toolbar is not only disabled by default in Windows 7, it’s actually missing from the list of toolbars. As is probably obvious, the concept of having a set of pinned shortcut icons is now integrated directly into the new taskbar. To re-enable it, do the following:

- Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar
- In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch
- Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.
- Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.
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Update Windows 7 Beta to Release Candidate

The Microsoft Engineering team has outlined how Windows 7 Beta users can upgrade their version of Windows 7 to the soon to be released Release Candidate of Windows 7. The disappointing news is that Microsoft suggests to do a clean install instead as the development changes introduced after the release of the beta of Windows 7 were not always compatible with the upgrades made thereafter. 

A clean install on the other hand would mean that all the changes and customizations made to the operating system by the user would be lost. This is a nuisance although everyone knew beforehand that this could happen eventually. Microsoft is suggesting to do a clean install or upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

The RC, however, is about getting breadth coverage to validate the product in real-world scenarios. As a result, we want to encourage you to revert to a Vista image and upgrade or to do a clean install, rather than upgrade the existing Beta.

The Windows 7 release candidate setup will quit automatically if it recognizes a pre-RC build on the computer system. Microsoft did however publish a workaround for that for users who really need to do it:

1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
3. Browse to the sources directory.
4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).
6. Save the file in place with the same name.
7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.
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Remove unecessary components from Windows 7

One of the new features of Windows 7 is flexibility, a lot of components can be removed if the user has no interest in them.

To do that go to control panel > program and features > turn windows components on or off

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