Seven Cool Tweaks for Windows 7

Seven Cool Tweaks for Windows 7

Jayesh Limaye, Oct 25, 2009 1016 hrs IST

Get more out of Windows 7 with these interesting tips

5. Turn off unnecessary Windows features

In Windows 7, you can easily turn off Windows components which you may deem unnecessary. Some such components can be Windows Search, the Gadget platform, media features or even Internet Explorer, many of which could not be disabled in earlier Windows versions.

These can be disabled as follows:
1. Open Control Panel and select "Programs And Features".
2. Click on Turn Windows Features On Or Off in the left pane.
3. Here you can enable or disable various Windows features by selecting or deselecting the checkboxes next to the feature. Click on OK.

6. Make Adobe Reader display PDFs properly

It has been often noticed that while opening a PDF file in Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7, (assuming that Adobe Reader is installed), you get an error message and the file does not open. This is a known issue and there is a workaround for this. All you need to do is to set Adobe not to display PDFs in the browser and here is how you can do it.

1. Open Adobe Reader and click on Edit > Preferences.
2. Click on Internet in the Categories pane on the left.
4. Deselect the Display PDF in Browser check box under Web Browser Options, and click on OK.

7. Speed up using the new keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts have always been there in Windows and they really speed up things. Windows 7 has more such shortcuts to speed up things even more and here they are.

Press Alt + P in Windows Explorer to turn the preview pane on.
Press Windows + P to open the Display Switcher applet.
Press Windows + Spacebar to show the desktop and make active windows transparent.
Press Windows + Plus (+) key to turn on the Magnifier to zoom in on the desktop. Pressing Windows + Minus (-) key zooms out.
Press Ctrl + click an icon in the taskbar to toggle between the open instances of the program.
Press Windows + Left or Right Arrow key to shift the active window to the left or right side of the screen and make it fill half the screen. This is similar to dragging the window to the left or right edge of the screen using a mouse, but in this case, you do not need a mouse.

When using multiple monitors, press Windows + Shift + Left or Right Arrow key to move the window to the left or right monitor.