Seven Top Tips and Tools for Windows 7

Windows 7 has hundreds of enhancements over Windows Vista, some of them are obvious, some of them not so. In this quick guide I'll show you the ones I use most day to day, and of course - this will be a list of seven.

User Access Control (UAC)

One of the most annoying features in Windows Vista has been re-written to become a lot more useful. Some are saying that it is now what it should have been in Vista. Basically you have more than two options now, in fact 4, ranging from Notifying the user when any change is detected, down to not notifying the user at all.

This means that Users and Administrators can choose a healthy middle ground, and only be alerted to changes to the core operating system, which unless you initiated it, would be a great way of stopping annoying software from installing itself.

To access the UAC just click Start, and in the search box type "UAC"

Snap

Ever wished you could align 2 windows so that they take exactly half a screen, so that you can compare 2 versions of a document for example? Or look at 2 web pages simultaneously? Well, now you can. Simply click the title bar and drag the window to the side of the screen, it will snap to take the half that you dragged to. Drag it to the left of the screen for a left snap, right for a right snap and top to maximize.

There is one issue though, if you span your desktop accross 2 screens (or more) you can only snap to the outer edges.

Shake

Probably my second most used feature, and yet the most useless when described. If like me you have tens of windows open at a time, but only want to see one for the time being? Well, you could just minimize everything by clicking show desktop, and restore the window you were looking at. But if that window is now stacked with 9 other similar ones with similar names that could take a while.

Instead, just grab the window you want to focus on and shake it. All other windows will minimize leaving you with just the desktop and the window you want to work in.

Defrag

Although you now defragment on a schedule, it's still worth knowing how to get into the tool quickly to see how well you're performing, especially as a fragmented drive is one of the fastest ways to kill performance on your computer. Simply click start, and in the search box type "disk Defrag" and press enter. Hey presto, the defragmenter will load up.

You can in fact type many commands here, such as "Notepad", "Paint", "UAC" and almost any application you've installed yourself, so that you don't need to trawl through the start menu. Nifty.

System Restore

Right now most peowill be thinking I'm mad, and just adding random features to make this list add up to seven. However, system restore has had a brilliant overhaul and now includes a few things which were missing from previous versions.

For example, you can now tell system restore how much of your hard drive it's allowed to use, which for some reason was taken out of Vista.

The most useful feature though is that it now automatically save previous versions of files for you, as well as system restore points. Those that have used business machines over the past few year have probably encountered previous versions, but for those that haven't it does almost exactly what it sounds like. Every time you change or delete a file, a backup copy of the old file is made. Meaning that if you accidently delete or overwrite something, you now have a chance of getting it back without resorting to third party software.

Windows DVD Maker

Ever wish you could easily make DVD's from those movies you've (legally right?) downloaded off the internet? With some software you have to worry about codecs and quality and many things most people just don't care about. In the rebuilt DVD maker, if Windows Media Player can play the video file, it can be made into a DVD. Simple.

Windows Update

I don't know what they've done to it, but it's suddenly great. Last weI took an 8 year old laptop, which Vista failed to install on, and installed Windows 7. Success in itself. But on loading I went straight to Windows Update and discovered that it had drivers for the 35 devices which were coming up as "unrecognized". This is a major boon which very few will appreciate more than once, but just go and ask your IT guy how easy it is to find drivers for obsolete hardware and I'm sure he'll let you know.

So thats it, my list of seven feature I couldn't live without in Windows 7. There are plenty more, such as "Peak" and the improved Media Center, but then the list wouldn't just be seven items long. However, if you have any more to share, I'd appreciate a comment saying which and why.