Windows® 7 Secrets®

Chapter 26. IT Pro: Windows 7 at Work

In This Chapter

• Understanding Windows 7's most interesting enterprise features

• Understanding which Windows 7 business features are useful on a standalone PC

• Using BitLocker and BitLocker To Go to protect hard drives and removable storage devices

• Mounting virtual hard disks with Disk Management

• Getting started with Windows PowerShell 2.0

While this book focuses exclusively on you, the end user, the truth is that Windows 7 is a slave to many masters and must serve the needs of hundreds of millions of users, each one of which has different needs and wants. That said, one might easily break down the end user features and functionality in Windows 7 into three core groups: those that serve consumers, those that serve businesses, and those that serve both. That latter category is easily defined. It includes such things as Windows 7's pervasive security features, Tablet PCs, productivity enhancements in the Aero user experience, and networking.

Consumer features, such as Windows Media Player, Media Center, and gaming, are also easily defined and identified. And so it is, too, with Windows 7's business-oriented features. You don't have to understand what features like AppLocker, BranchCache, and PowerShell 2.0 do in order to recognize that they're probably not going to be of interest to your grandmother. But they play a critical role in defining what Windows 7 is, and thus what benefits it offers to different segments of the market.

In this chapter, we look ...