New Windows 7 Tips

Speed up the taskbar’s thumbnail display

For myself, the delayed response in hovering over icons in the
taskbar can be annoying when I’m trying to get work done quickly. With
a little registry tweak you can speed it up and get things done quicker.

1. Press WinKey + R to bring up the run command, type regedit, and press enter.
2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Mouse and double click MouseHoverTime
3. Change the value from 400 to 50 (or whatever value you want, the delay time is in milliseconds) and press the OK button.
4. Restart your computer and voila! Faster response time.

Disable minimize/maximize animations

The minimize/maximize animations don’t really add any functionality
and all it does is make the operating system seem slower. Disabling the
minimize/maximize animations will make your system feel snappier.

1. Bring up your start menu and click Control Panel
2. Navigate to System and Security > System and click Advanced system settings located on the left sidebar. Under Performance click the Settings button.
3. Select the Custom option and uncheck the box next to Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
4. Click OK and the settings should be applied instantly.

See all possible tasks in control panel

Tired of navigating through all the links in Windows 7’s control
panel? Well with this trick you will be able to see all tasks in the
control panel in an easy to navigate list.

Notice how there are 281 tasks available

1. Right click the desktop and click New > Shortcut.
2. For the location put explorer.exe shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} and click on the Next button. Proceed to name your shortcut and click Finish.
3. Double click your newly created shortcut and enjoy!

Use the new hot keys available in Windows 7

Some of the hot keys are very easy to remember and can be useful to
speed up your daily tasks. I haven’t listed all of them, just a few
that I found were useful.

• Maximize Window - WinKey + Up
• Minimize Window - WinKey + Down
• Snap Window to Left - WinKey + Left
• Snap Window to Right - WinKey + Right
• Peek at desktop - WinKey + Space
• Maximize Window - WinKey + Up

For a more complete list of hot keys, visit Neowin.net forums.

Other cool features

There are some other cool features available in Windows 7 that might
not be completely obvious at first. Here are some neat ones I found:

• Peek at desktop (Aero Peek) - Hover your mouse to
  the right of the date/time area of the taskbar (or if you have your
  taskbar set on the left/right side it is below the date/time).
• Minimize all windows besides focused one (Aero Shake)
  - Click and hold the titlebar of an existing window and shake it. All
  other windows will be minimized. Shake the window again to restore all
  windows.
• Close windows with middle click (scroll button down)
  - Go to your taskbar and mouse over an icon to bring up thumbnails of
  existing windows. Middle click on any thumbnail to close out of it.
• Snap a window to the left/right - Drag a window to
  the left/right side of the screen to snap it to that side. Drag it to
  the middle of the screen to unsnap it. This feature is great for
  comparing documents.
• Maximize a window by dragging it to the top - You can maximize a window by dragging it to the top of the screen, similar to the feature above.
• Access Jumplists - Right click on any icon in the
  taskbar to access its jumplist. A jumplist allows you to access certain
  features of the program without even opening it. For example, the
  jumplist for explorer allows me to access frequently accessed documents.

Update: Tim Sneath, a Microsoft employee, has posted his own tips via his MSDN blog. Check it out for additional tips and tricks. It is really quite useful.