Windows 7 offers several improvements for people who like to go mouse- and keyboard-free. They're available only in the Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions of Windows 7.

Tablet math

At last, you can take notes on your tablet in algebra class: the new Math Input Panel recognizes handwritten math expressions. Once your equation is recognized, you can insert it into a word-processing or computational program.

The new Math Input Panel recognizes handwritten formulas.

A mightier pen

With Windows 7, handwriting recognition is faster and more accurate. Windows 7 Ultimate edition supports more languages—including breakthroughs for East Asian writing systems. To recognize your handwriting in a specific language, your Tablet PC must have the handwriting recognizer for that language installed, which you can get by downloading the corresponding language pack from Windows Update.

Personalized custom dictionaries help with the recognition of specialized vocabulary (like medical and technical terms), and text prediction speeds up the input process to make your note-taking really fly.

Take notes on the fly with better pen input.

Touch and go

Multitouch capability (with the right hardware) frees you from your pen, letting you right-click, scroll, and work with pictures using your fingertips.

The gestures are intuitive: press and hold to right-click, slide two fingers apart to zoom out and back together to zoom in, flick to scroll through a page, and touch two points and rotate to turn an image.