[ Further reading: How to safely mingle personal and business data in a Windows world ]
So check out these tips. If you like them, we'll keep more coming.
General tips
We'll start with a few nifty tips that can make your desktop more interesting, make it easier to get around and increase your computer's power efficiency.
Use hidden international wallpapers and themes
When you first install Windows 7, it asks for your language, time and currency. Based on your responses, it installs a set of wallpapers and themes. If you choose English (United States) for your time and currency format, for example, the available desktop backgrounds and themes will include a United States section with scenery from locations such as Maine, the Southwest and so on.
Hidden, though, are background scenery and themes from other English-speaking countries -- Australia, Canada, Great Britain and South Africa. Normally, you can't access those backgrounds or themes, but there is a simple way you can install and use them:
1. In the search box in the Start menu, type C:WindowsGlobalizationMCT and press Enter. (Note: If Windows 7 is installed in a drive other than C:, use that letter instead.)
2. Windows Explorer will launch and show you a list of subfolders under C:WindowsGlobalizationMCT: MCT-AU, MCT-CA, MCT-GB, MCT-US, and MCT-ZA. Each subfolder has wallpapers for a specific country: AU for Australia, CA for Canada, GB for Great Britain, US for the United States, and ZA for South Africa.
You can accomplish the same thing by pressing the Window key-Home key combination -- although doing that is not nearly as much fun.
Get a power efficiency report
Have a laptop and want to get more battery life out of it? Windows 7 includes a hidden built-in tool that will examine your laptop's energy use and make recommendations on how to improve it. To use it:
1. Run a command prompt as an administrator. To do this, type cmd in the search box, and when the cmd icon appears, right-click it and choose "Run as administrator."
2. At the command line, type in the following:
powercfg -energy -output <i>Folder</i>Energy_Report.html
where Folder represents the folder where you want the report to be placed.
4. From now on, when you type a search term in the Search box on the Start Menu, a "Search the Internet" link will appear. Click the link to launch the search in your default browser with your default search engine.
Customize the Shut down button
The default action of the Start Menu's Shut down button is to turn off your PC. If you want to use the button for another action, such as restarting your PC, you click the arrow to the right of the Shut down button and select an action from the drop-down menu.
What if you rarely shut your PC down completely but frequently restart it? You can change the Shut down button's default action to be Restart -- or Switch user, Log off, Lock, Sleep or Hibernate.
To change your default, right-click the Start button and select Properties. On the Start Menu tab, click the "Power button action" drop-down menu and select which action you want to be the default. Then click OK, and OK again.
Add a Videos link to the Start Menu
The Windows 7 Start Menu includes links to your Pictures and Music folders, but not to your Videos folder. If you watch a lot of videos and want a link to them on your Start Menu, here's what you can do:
If you'd prefer that Videos display as a menu, with links to files and submenus, instead select "Display as a menu."
Windows Explorer tips
Windows Explorer is the heart and soul of the Windows interface, and overall it works quite well. But you can make it better.
Use check boxes to select multiple files
In order to select multiple files for an operation such as copying, moving or deleting in Windows Explorer, you generally use the keyboard and the mouse, Ctrl-clicking every file you want to select.
But if you're mouse-centric, there's a way to select multiple files in Windows 7 using only your mouse, via check boxes. To do it:
4. From now on, when you hover your mouse over a file in Windows Explorer, a check box will appear next to it; click it to select the file. Once a file is selected, the checked box remains next to it; if you uncheck it, the box will disappear when you move your mouse away.
Open a command prompt at any folder
Command prompt fans will welcome this tip. With it, when you're in Windows Explorer, you can open a command prompt to any folder. This tip does exactly what the Windows XP PowerToy "Open Command Window Here" does.
To use it, hold down the Shift key and right-click a folder, then choose "Open command window here" from the context menu that appears. (Note that this tip doesn't work in the Documents folder.)
Protect the privacy of your Explorer searches
Note: This tip relies on the Group Policy Editor, which isn't available in some versions of Windows 7. Thus, this tip will not work if you have the Home Premium, Starter, or Home Basic editions of Windows 7.
When you search through your PC from Windows Explorer, you can see the most recent searches that have been performed. If you share a PC and don't want others to see what you've searched for, you can turn off the recent searches feature:
1. In the Start menu's Search box, type GPEDIT.MSC and press Enter to launch the Group Policy Editor.
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2. Go to User Configuration --> Administrative Templates --> Windows Components --> Windows Explorer.
3. Double-click "Turn off display of recent search entries in the Windows Explorer search box" and select Enabled from the screen that appears. Then click OK. The recent searches feature will now be turned off.
Set a new Windows Explorer launch folder
When you run Windows Explorer, it always opens to the Libraries folder. That's fine if you use Microsoft's default file organization, which designates Libraries as the overall container for your folders.
But what if you don't? You might prefer to have Windows Explorer open to Computer or any other folder you choose. Here's how to do it:
Changing the default Explorer location.
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1. Right-click the Windows Explorer icon on the taskbar (it's the one that looks like a folder), and then right-click the Windows Explorer icon from the context menu that appears and select Properties. The Windows Explorer Properties dialog box appears.
2. You'll have to edit the Target field on the Shortcut tab of this dialog box in order to change the default location at which Explorer opens.
If you want Explorer to open to a specific folder, simply enter the name of the folder, substituting your folder name for Folder, below, like this:
%windir%explorer.exe c:<i>Folder</i>
So to open Explorer to the folder named Budget, you would type this in the Target field:
%windir%explorer.exe c:Budget
If you want Explorer to open to special, pre-set locations, such as Computer, you'll need to enter special syntax in the Target field. Following is a list of three common locations and the syntax to use, followed by the syntax for the Libraries folder in case you ever want to revert to the default.
Computer: %windir%explorer.exe ::20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309DMy Documents:%windir%explorer.exe ::450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103Network: %windir%explorer.exe ::208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309DLibraries: %SystemRoot%explorer.exe
3. After you've changed the Target field, click OK. Next time you launch Windows Explorer, it will open to the new location you've designated.
