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Windows 7 Hidden Gems – Additional functionality

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:11:46 +0000

I’ve been living with Windows 7 for a good few months now and in that time have discovered a couple of little ‘hidden gems’ which I wanted to share with you:

Aero Shake
In Windows 7, when you click on the title bar of any window and shake it every other open window gets minimised straight back in to your taskbar, reducing clutter on your screen. This allows you to focus on the one window and then when ready shake it again and the other windows will reappear.

There are additional Aero user interface related features which make a welcome debut. These include Aero Peek which allows you to immediately see what’s going on in an application just by hovering over the icon in the task bar and Aero Snap which quickly allows you to rearrange your desktop by slamming any open window against the left, right or top side of your screen; try it!

Sticky Notes
Proof, if needed, that some of the simplest applications make the largest differences to the end user experience. One of the most commonly used applications on my PC used to be the incredibly simple ‘notepad’ as I find that my working life works a lot better if I simplify everything down in to lists.

Rather than jotting notes on random pieces of paper that will almost certainly get lost throughout the day I used to dump everything in notepad and ensure that every line was eventually cleared so I was left with a blank page before I went home.

Sticky notes have a similar application. To get started click on the start menu and type in ‘sticky’ and begin typing tasks for the day or things to remember in to little post it notes that stick to your screen. When complete either close or minimise the application to get back to the job in hand, safe in the knowledge that once Sticky Notes are reopened, these tasks will reappear exactly as you left them. When a task has been completed or the note simply isn’t needed, it can be deleted with one click of the mouse.

Improved Calculator
Windows 7 calculator has improved considerably; now rather than being an arithmetic only affair, it can be operated in four modes – Standard, Scientific, Programmer and Statistical. It can also perform unit conversion, for example grams to ounces, metres to feet and Celsius to Fahrenheit along with a couple of unexpected features such as the ability to calculate the number of days between two dates or the value of your mortgage repayment. Surely in the next version of Windows the calculator application will finally gain graphical capabilities.

Windows Disk Image Burner
For some time now the preferred method of copying and storing CD’s and DVD’s has been by using an ISO file; a single image which includes the contents of an entire disk. Reading these files used to require a specific application (the likes of which I’ve covered previously in Click) but every version of Windows 7 now includes support for these straight out the box; simply double click on the ISO file that you wish to burn, insert a blank CD or DVD and you’re done.

Annoyances.org

admin — Sat, 01 Jan 2005 18:28:59 +0000

I get a large number of questions from people asking for technical support concerning potentially easy to solve problems. Such issues can usually be solved simply by typing the problem into Google as you will often find that a user has most likely had a similar problem at some point in time and posted a solution to it on one of the many relevant websites and forums.

One site that I’ve recently discovered that provides a solution large number of common questions users have regarding their Windows installations is www.annoyances.org. The site is divided into a number of different sections including ‘Using Windows’, ‘Customising’, ‘Annoyances’, ‘Reducing Clutter’, ‘Performance’, ‘Troubleshooting’, ‘Applications’ and ‘Humour’ which have all been written by the website authors.

There is also an extremely comprehensive forums section that consists of questions and answers maintained by visitors to the site and this can be searched by keyword or by the genre of Windows you are enquiring about. Of course you are free to post any question that you wish answering as well as providing replies to people who are experiencing similar problems to those you have had in the past.

Looking through the list of tips there are a number that stick out as being potentially rather useful although I must admit that I had never before sat down and wished that any of the modifications that the site suggests were possible. The advice given is often not relating to an immediate problem that you may have but rather to generally improve your Windows experience by providing helpful chunks of information.

To be honest I believe that since it is New Years Day today that many of you will be reaching for the Alka-Seltzer whilst reading this article hence I stumbled across the ‘Computer Humour’ section of annoyances.org and discovered the following light hearted reading. This isn’t educational as such but thought it would be a nice amusing way to enter the New Year; below follows a list of observations relating to the user of computers in Hollywood movies which I think most of you will have recognised at some point or another.

Word processors never display a cursor.
All monitors display inch-high letters.
The most relevant information is displayed in a separate windows right in the middle of the screen, but there’s never an Ok button to other way to close it.
High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces. Those that don’t, have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.
Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing “ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES” on any keyboard.
Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing “UPLOAD VIRUS”
Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes.
The really advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.
All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.
Corollary: sending data to a modem/tape drive/printer faster than expected causes it to explode.
People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
Any PERMISSION DENIED error has an OVERRIDE function
When the power plant/missile-site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has however, everyone must have been highly trained, because none of the buttons are labelled.
Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.
Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face
The internet connects to everything in the movies. You can edit credit records, search hotel registries, lookup police criminal files, search (and edit) drivers license databases, edit social security files and more just using the internet!
Smashing the monitor prevents the whole system from working
You can launch nuclear missiles from any bedroom using an analogue modem, but only if you know a single secret password.

I wish you all a prosperous New Year and I look forward to passing more helpful nuggets of information on to you all in 2005.

Readers Questions

admin — Sat, 24 May 2003 16:42:26 +0000

Once again I’m going to take the time out to answer a selection of readers’ questions that I have received recently:

I do a regular disc clean up as I have no got a very large hard disc, and come across a file called INDEX in my temporary internet file\content.IE5\. I see it contains 1.5 MB so would like to clear it but am unable to access it. It has only appeared since I upgraded to Windows ME but I suspect is has been lurking elsewhere under another guise and so I would appreciate any advice. Thank you and congratulations on an interesting column.

John Cadman, via E-mail

The index.dat file keeps a list of all websites visited on the computer, cookies that you have received and files downloaded but unfortunately it is not automatically cleared out when you delete the browser history, cookies and cache from Internet Explorer. As far as removing the file in concerned for the sakes of saving yourself 1.5mg of disk space seems somewhat over the top as in my opinion as the space you’ll save could at the end of the day only be used to store a couple of pictures.
Many users may want to get rid of this file for a different reason however and that is because you may not always want people to be able to track the sites that you’ve been to and files that you’ve downloaded. This becomes somewhat complicated when you consider that Windows won’t normally allow you to just delete the file which is normally stored in one of the following locations in the Windows directory:

Cookies\index.dat

History\History.IE5\index.dat

Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\index.dat

Unfortunately I do not know of a free utility that will clear these away for you along with any other clutter that Internet Explorer leaves behind although try the free trial editions of Evidence Eliminator (www.evidence-eliminator.com) and History Kill (www.historykill.info) and see what you think. If any readers know of such a utility that is free of charge then please let me know, but unless you’ve been doing anything dodgy on your computer or are REALLY short of hard disk space then it probably isn’t worth the hassle.

I read your column in the Herald Express but don’t always remember to keep the website addresses that you sometimes recommend; could you make a list of those featured to date in one of your future columns?

Do you think signing up with MSN Hotmail is good, bad or indifferent? I have a friend who spends time in Spain and uses an internet cafe and hotmail to keep in touch; so far I have not used a chat line and am wary of giving my details to ‘unknowns’.

Thanks for a readable and informative column and also for prompt delivery of ink cartridge ordered recently, which, owing to it being my first attempt at replacing nearly got jammed in upside down, but got there successfully in the end!

Teresa Bastow, via E-mail

For one of my future articles in the Herald Express I will spend listing past website addresses that I’ve given that I feel may still be of relevance to readers and will e-mail this list to you at such a point.

In regards to Hotmail, I wouldn’t exactly consider them an ‘unknown’ as it is run by Microsoft who are arguably one of the biggest multinational companies and so to consider them in such a respect would be something of an understatement. If you are particularly bothered about giving your details to another company then just do as I would do in such a situation and fabricate some user details such as my particular favourite, ‘Mr Donald Duck’