Windows 7 tips and tricks

[Steve]

User interface

 

If you drag a window to the top of the screen, it maximises. Drag a window to the left edge of the screen and it'll expand to fill just the left half, the same with the right edge. If you grab a window and shake it, all other windows minimise. Shake the window again and it restores all of the other windows.

 

Shortcuts

 

If you have items pinned to the taskbar, you can launch them with keyboard shortcuts: -

 

Windows key + 1 = Launches the first program (the one furthest left)

Windows key + 2 = Launches the second program along

 

etc.

 

If you already have a program open, you can use the same shortcuts to minimise and maximise or switch between windows.

 

Jump lists

 

When you pin certain applications/shortcuts to the taskbar, jump lists will be created automatically as you carry out certain tasks/open certain files, which you can see by right-clicking the shortcut. You can pin any item on a jump list by hitting the pin icon to the right of it. You can also drag items to the icon on the taskbar to add them to the jump list. You can drag items out of a jump list to the desktop and they'll then function as shortcuts.

 

For example, I have a Windows Explorer shortcut pinned to the taskbar. I can drag and drop certain folders to it to create direct shortcuts to those folders within the jump list, as I've done here with the music, videos and pictures folders: -

 

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/51/jumplistx.jpg

 

The list of recently opened files, folders and locations is populated automatically. Pretty useful! At the moment, a lot of programs don't populate jump lists automatically when they're pinned to the taskbar because they're not written with Windows 7 in mind, but I'm sure this will change.

 

Aero peek

 

If you have multiple instances of the same application open, you'll see that they become grouped on the appropriate taskbar button (assuming it's pinned to the taskbar). Here's 3 instances of Windows Explorer open at the same time: -

 

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7559/peek1.jpg

 

If you then hover the mouse pointer over the taskbar button, the aero peek windows appear - essentially mini versions of the open windows. When you point at one, all of the other windows become transparent, enabling you to see the window you selected: -

 

http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/1772/peek2.jpg

 

If you click on a particular aero peek window, the appropriate window on the desktop will be given focus and be brought to the front. You can also close windows directly from the aero peek previews by clicking the red X, top right in each preview window.

 

Faster boot tweak

 

For a faster boot with a dual, triple, or quad core processor, type msconfig into the search box in the start menu and fire it up. Click on the "Boot" tab, then click "Advanced options...". Check the "Number of processors:" box and select the number of cores your CPU has from the drop down list: -

 

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/3491/bootz.jpg

 

Hit OK to take you back to the previous window, then hit OK again and you're done.

[Liam]

Very cool. Didn't know most of this.

[Steve]

Here's another keyboard shortcut. If you hold down the Windows key and press tab, you can scroll through your open windows and apps in this view: -

 

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8030/win7pq.jpg

 

Hold down shift as well to scroll in the other direction.

[Bubba]

have they optimised the cpu consumption on windows 7? If I remember correctly that was the big problem with vista...