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Need help Christmas shopping. Here are a few presents that we recommend this year.

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Windows 7

Now that we are well past the October 22 release date, many of you may have upgraded, have purchased, or will receive a computer this holiday season that has Windows 7 installed.

And if you have been using Vista for a while, then Windows 7 won’t come as too big of a surprise.

If you were using Windows XP and skipped Vista in favor of waiting for Windows 7 (in hopes of missing all of the Vista hullabaloo) you’re probably going to be just as lost as if you had jumped on the Vista bandwagon in the first place.

Seven is just a very stable version of Vista. But, with a lot of new features to go along with it. Besides using half the memory (1GB), it runs smoother, faster, and remarkably irritant free. We’ll talk more about those new features in another Today’s Tech Tip.

Here are a few tips that will help you find those tweaks that will give the XP craving that you want for standard features.

1: Get the Quick Launch back
Something is missing from Seven’s taskbar. You can pin programs to the Start menu now, which I don’t really do.  But I also liked the Quick Launch bar, where I could put icons for programs I use a little less frequently but often enough that I don’t want to have short cuts scattered all over my desktop.  Quick Launch is missing in Windows 7, but there is a way to bring it back. You’ll find step by step instructions with screenshots in this tutorial. Once you have the Quick Launch bar on your taskbar, you can drag programs to it as you did in Vista or XP.

2: Bring back the Vista/XP taskbar look and behavior

Even though I like the new taskbar, I know some people don’t. They’d prefer to have the old Vista/XP look and behavior, where the taskbar uses less screen space. It’s easy to change the taskbar so it will be similar to its former look:

1. Right click the Start button and select Properties.
2. Click the taskbar tab.
3. Check the box that says “Use small icons” and click Apply.

If you don’t like the way Windows 7 combines icons for all instances of an application, you can change that, too. On the same tab, click the down arrow on the Taskbar Buttons box and select Combine When Taskbar Is Full.

This dialog box also allows you to select the taskbar location on the screen (bottom, top, left, or right), customize which icons appear in the notification area (system tray), and decide whether to temporarily minimize all open windows when you place your mouse on the far end (or bottom) of the taskbar (Desktop Preview).

3: Turn off Aero Snap
A new feature in Windows 7 is Aero Snap, which causes your application windows to automatically snap into a preconfigured place when you move them to the edges of the screen. Drag a window to the far right, and it will size itself to fill exactly half the screen. Drag it to the top corner and it will maximize to fill the whole screen. For some this could be handy. For me it was annoying because I prefer that my windows stay the size I originally made them. Here’s how to turn Snap off:

1. Click Start and select Control Panel.
2. Click Ease of Access Center.
3. Click Make the Mouse Easier to Use.
4. Select the Prevent Windows From Being Automatically Arranged When Moved To The Edge Of The Screen check box.
5. Click OK.

Next time on Today’s Tech Tip we’ll show you how to:

• Format the text in the new sticky notes feature
• Use the new Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts
• and, Install Windows 7 from a USB thumb drive

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