Sticky Notes lets you save notes on the desktop.

Paint
This is another app that has been around for ages without any significant changes. The user interface now looks like that of an Office 2007 application by the inclusion of the Ribbon control. This lets you work with a much larger number of tools and has a number of enhancements in what Paint can do. Although it is not something that you can use for editing photos or very precise graphics, this is much better than what was there earlier and can be used for simple jobs in a much easier fashion.

WordPad
Taken as a simple word processer, WordPad too gets the new Office 2007 Ribbon interface to make finding and using features easier. Another enhancement is that it can now open, edit and save in the new DOCX format as well.

Sticky Notes
This is a new application that, as the name suggests, displays sticky notes on the screen. You can add as many notes as you wish and move them around, change their shape and color and remove them when done with.

The new Paint app has a number of new features and a new Ribbon based interface.

Live Replacements
As I mentioned earlier, there are some applications that have simply gone, starting Windows 7---for instance, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Mail. However, there's no reason to worry, since all of these and more are now part of the Windows Live Essentials (WLE) Suite. You can download the installer for WLE that gives you a number of more applications:

Messenger: The MSN Messenger IM client that lets you chat with friends.

Mail: The replacement for Outlook Express and Windows Mail, lets you check your POP/IMAP accounts as well as connect to Newsgroups and read RSS feeds.

Photo Gallery: Lets you manipulate photos on your machine as well as upload them to a gallery on the Internet.

Toolbar: Adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer that gives you a number of search and other options.

Writer: If you are into writing blogs, this is a must-have application as it allows you to compose your posts offline and post them directly to your blog.
Family Safety: Controls the content that your children can access on the Internet.

Silverlight: Installs the Silverlight runtime that lets you view rich interactive content (such as on the DLF IPL site at www.iplt20.com) Movie Maker: A replacement for the Windows Movie Maker, it allows you to create home movies easily.

Your Choice
Many of the other apps such as Media Player and Media Center also get a UI makeover. However one of the most significant change is that you now have control over which apps remain installed on your system. In the Release Candidate for May, you have the option to uninstall built in applications such as Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Media Center and others. This does not however, remove their core systems only their user interfaces, so that other apps that depend on services that say, Internet Explorer provides, can continue to function. However, the executable for these applications will be removed so that there is no way to directly launch them anymore.

All in all, Windows 7 gives you a whole bunch of updated applications as well as many other new apps that can be installed and uninstalled at your choice. The Release Candidate shall be out in May, so make sure you do get your hands on it.