So as I said earlier today, I emailed the Windows SideShow team for information about what’s going on in Windows 7, and here’s the response I got:
Richard,
Post-beta, we made a change to help reduce clutter in Control Panel and improve the user experience by only showing items that were relevant to the user’s current configuration. Because Windows SideShow is a hardware dependent feature, we felt it was best to only show it when appropriate hardware was installed on the PC (other Control Panels behave similarly). If you went to the SideShow control panel in the beta build, you’ll notice there’s really not much you can actually do there without a device installed.
Rest assured, Windows SideShow is still there! As soon as you connect up a SideShow-compatible device (such as our latest Device Simulator) the control panel will go back to where it belongs.
I was sceptical at first because my device (HTC Touch HD) was paired with the PC running 7, however it was showing no Windows SideShow service available in the Bluetooth properties.
I decided to un-pair the device and start again, and magically SideShow reappeared. Here’s the screenshot using the Snipping Tool of Control Panel after the SideShow service was added.
Now that this is working again, I’m going to have a play and see if there is an updated version of the Windows Media Center gadget available for Windows 7. It will be interesting test because my device is also running Windows Mobile 6.5.