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* Device Stage – a central location for customers to more easily interact with devices, ranging from printers, cameras, cell phones, media players, etc. Device Stage will only recognize “Device-Stage-enabled” peripherals. According to additional info on Microsoft’s WinHEC site, “Device Stage is a new way for consumers to manage, explore, sync, print to, or do other common device-related tasks. (I wonder: Is this more than souped-up Plug and Play?)

* Action Center — a self-diagnosis feature to help users troubleshoot problems with their Windows 7 systems

* StreamOn — a way to control audio/video content on PCs and devices (Part of the next version of Windows Media Player? Or something to do with Live Mesh? I don’t have more info at this time.)

* A new animation framework for customizing animations (Is this akin to Apple’s Core Animation tool? I have no idea.)

* New task bar and shell integration (Hints of this emerged in the September M3 leak)

* Multi-touch and gesture recognition — something Microsoft showed off earlier this year in an early Windows 7 preview

* Improved Bluetooth support (Not clear if this goes beyond the new level of Bluetooth support Microsoft is adding via Vista Service Pack 2)

* Ribbons, ribbons everywhere. As was evident in the leaked September M3 build, Microsoft is adding its Ribbon UI to the applets that are part of Windows 7.