Top 10 Windows 7 Features #2: Device Stage

Rendering the Control Panel obsolete One offshoot of the Device Stage that will make a positive impact on Windows 7 is the new "congregation area," if you will, for stuff that's plugged into the PC. It's the new Devices and Printers window, and it provides an alternate view of what Bluetooth and other device engineers are calling the "personal area network."

This window is effectively a list of everything that's attached to the operating system -- if Windows can see it, it's here. Everything appears once and once only, so a multi-function printer doesn't show up as a fax machine and as a telephone separately; and a personal media player doesn't show up as an MP3, a video player, a game machine, and a camera.

Here also, in blatant contrast to how Windows has always worked, the PC itself is a device. Right-clicking on it brings up a popup menu of the typical functions associated with changing how it's functioning -- sound, mouse sensitivity, current language, keyboard options, ejecting an attached device. This doesn't replace the Control Panel, but a newcomer to Windows may very well find this way of setting preferences easier to comprehend.

Using the metadata file, Microsoft was able to retrieve a picture of…well, a Microsoft-brand device from the Internet, and register that as the keyboard attached to our Windows 7 test system. But with very few exceptions from partners such as Canon, there are no other working examples of "staged" devices for Win7 RC users to test. For the meantime, Win7 is capable of providing alternative renderings; but in the screenshot above, that thing that looks like an external hard drive bears no resemblance at all to my BlackBerry 8830.

So you can see the problem on the horizon. Device Stage could very well become an influential element for Windows 7 for either of two reasons: 1) It could dramatically improve the way users make sense of the things they can do with their devices once they're plugged in; or 2) it could drive home even further the reluctance of certain other manufacturers to cooperate, to even try to do their part to make their devices interoperable with the operating system that three out of five of their customers are likely to be using in 2011. How Windows 7 is perceived by the general public -- even by folks who use something else, like Mac OS -- may be determined by how well Device Stage attains its principal goal.