Just for you, I put together a video highlighting my favorite Windows 7 features. These are mostly consumer-oriented features; I’m skipping over many new IT-oriented improvements.

Take a five-minute break and play Abstract Sea, an Asteroids-like game with 1942-like power-ups. This requires you to coordinate your left hand (for directional controls) with your right hand (for aiming). My high score is 45,480 (I played three times). Post your high score in the comments.

Via Jay Is Games.

Via Jay Is Games, here’s a fun flash game. Just drag or click to remove the blue squares, and avoid the pink squares. Bonus for hitting squares of other colors. Easy, fun, and not so addicting that it’ll waste your whole afternoon.

Use this tip to play it full-screen. I only played once, but my high score was 79010. Post your score in the comments.

Hate your computer to look like everyone else? Dan has released an updated version of the Vista Boot Logo Generator (v1.1). It’s 32-bit only (no 64-bit version available). He calls it a beta.

Look, it’s a holiday. You’re not supposed to be working today. So, rebel in your own quiet way by being unproductive.

Fire Spikey around to remove the vegetation, causing the jars to fall and break, releasing the butterflies. OK, it’s not the most macho game around.

My high score is 38,124. Post your score in the comments, you rebel, you.

I discovered Flash Element TD, a tower-based defense game that runs in your browser, over at Jay Is Games. Setup towers to shoot down attackers who have to work their way through your maze. You can upgrade your towers and such. Just mindless fun.

Use this tip to play it full-screen. My high score is 14021 (updated…proof after the break). Post your score in the comments.

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There’s a new version of Google Earth, the mapping program that’s more fun than a game. It’s a little slow at the moment.

It’s not officially supported on Vista, but I can’t really slap Google’s hand, because Microsoft has lots of software that’s not supported on Vista yet. It does run, though. It’s just a little buggy. On my newer Dell D820 laptop with the NVidia video adapter, graphics are flakey in DirectX mode. OpenGL works, but it’s wicked slow. On my older Vista laptop, there’s no flakiness. The big problem is that textured buildings don’t work in Vista (as shown working correctly in the picture above). 3D buildings show up, but without textures enabled.

Update: Textures are working now. I think the server that provides them was just overburdened for a moment.