I don’t know about you, but I’ve always dropped files directly on the quick launch buttons to quickly and easily open them in the application the shortcut points to, but now Windows 7 doesn’t let you do that—by default, at least.

When you try and drag a file onto a taskbar button in Windows 7, you’ll be prompted to “Pin to Application”, instead of opening the file.

The new HomeGroup feature makes sharing files and printers between Windows 7 machines very easy.  Today we will take a closer look at this new feature to show how easy the sharing process is.

Setting up your HomeGroup 

There are several ways to access the HomeGroup feature, go to Control Panel and click on “Choose homegroup and sharing options” or just type “homegroup” without quotes into the start menu search bar.

Did you know that you can install Windows 7 without any license key and use it for 30 days? What you might not know is that you can also extend that trial mode to 120 days, without requiring a key.

The basic way this works is that at the end of the 30 days, you’ll need to run a small command and reboot your computer, at which point you’ll have 30 more days, up to a maximum of 120 days. This trick should work regardless of where you got your copy of Windows 7 from.

Note: make sure to check out our screenshot walkthrough of the Windows 7 Beta if you haven’t already, because Microsoft is giving away beta keys that don’t expire until August 1st.

Extending the Trial By 30 Days

The first thing you’ll want to do is check how many days are left in your trial period. You can do this by right-clicking Computer and choosing Properties…

One of the biggest annoyances when setting up wireless networks is remembering the security key and typing it correctly so that you can connect all laptops and netbooks to it. Windows 7 makes it easy to export your wireless settings from one machine to another.

The backup of the wireless networks settings can be easily done from Windows 7, and the settings can be saved to a USB stick, and then the settings can be imported on laptops & netbooks running Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

How to Save Your Wireless Network Settings

First, open the Network and Sharing Center. You can do this by clicking on the wireless network symbol from the taskbar and clicking on ‘Open Network and Sharing Center’. An alternative would be to go to Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center.

Windows Media Player 12 which is included with Windows 7 allows you to easily turn your machine into a media server to stream music, movies, and pictures to other computers and devices on your home network.  Today we will show you how to set up streaming and how to use it.

Enable Streaming

To start streaming media from your Windows 7 machine you’ll need to turn it on by opening Media Player and under the Library section click on Stream then click Turn on media streaming.