14 DAY TRIAL // An impressive collection of personalization content was put together for the latest iteration of Windows.
Windows 7 ships by default with its own collection of themes and wallpapers, but there are additional downloads available from the Windows Personalization Gallery.
Depending on their country of residence, some Windows 7 customers received themes tailored specifically to their market.
According to the Redmond company, there are approximately 60 international theme packs for Windows 7, some of which included with the operating system, and becoming accessible as soon as the users is done installing the OS in a certain language.
Jennifer Shepherd, site manager for the Windows Personalization Gallery explains that she used Microsoft resources worldwide to put together the themes.
“When I was working on Windows 7 themes for specific places, such as India, Brazil, Italy, and Korea, I relied on co-workers in each country to advise me on which photographs would be best for their local areas,” she said.
“In other words, Microsoft employees in India voted on all the photos for the Indian themes; employees in Brazil voted on all the images for Brazil; and so on.
“Most of the photographs in the final themes were taken by professionals, but I also organized a worldwide employee photo contest to showcase what employees considered most unique and beautiful about their home countries.”
There were themes produced for 20 different locales of Windows 7. Obviously, the content was tailored to the localized version of the operating system.
Microsoft built 20 of the 40 international themes right into copies of Windows 7.
“A selected theme is installed depending on which language version of Windows 7 you buy, and where you live. So, if you buy the French version of Windows 7 and you select “France” as your location, you’ll see a French theme in your Personalization control panel,” Shepherd revealed.
Only Windows 7 copies sold in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States come with default themes featuring geographically-relevant wallpapers.
Another 20 theme packs were uploaded to the Windows Personalization Gallery and made available for download free of charge.
Our goal in preinstalling themes for selected locations was to make Windows 7 feel like it was made for you from the moment you begin to use it—no matter where you live in the world. We wanted to make sure there was a wide variety of themes available on the gallery, too—and we’ve been adding to it ever since,” Shepherd explained.
At the same time, there have been additional themes created with content from various markets worldwide which ended up on the Windows Personalization Gallery.
These themes were put together by local artists or photographers and are scattered across the gallery.