Previous Microsoft operating system were missing several features that many users were using day in day out. Think of playing divx movies or mounting and burning ISO images. The only choice left was to install third party software that would handle those operations. Microsoft has realized that and is adding some of those features natively into Windows 7 (read: Windows 7 To Support Popular Video Formats and Windows 7 Adds Native .mov Playback for a start.

While there is no sign yet of providing the means to mount ISO images in windows 7 at least the capability of burning these images has been added. Only the ISO format is mentioned in the post by Microsoft employee Brandon Le Blanc who describes the process of burning ISO images in Windows 7.

All that is needed to do is to right-click an ISO image and select Burn Disk Image from the context menu. This will open Windows Disc Image Burner giving the user the choice to select the disc burner and whether the image should be verified after the process.

It is by all means a very basic tool but it could be helpful for users who regularly have to burn ISO - and only ISO - images. Users who encounter different types of disk images like img, mdf or bin will still have to install a third party application to handle these. As do users who create ISO images or want to mount them on the computer system.

Source Win7 News