19. Fault-Tolerant Help
Windows 7 includes a new feature called the Fault Tolerant Help (FTH), a clever technology that looks out for unstable processes, detects those that may be crashing due to memory issues, and applies several real-time fixes to try and help. If these work, that's fine - if not, the fixes will be undone and they won't be applied to that process again. While this is very good in theory, it can leave you confused as some applications crash, then start working (sometimes) for no apparent reason. So if you'd like to check if the FTH is running on your PC, launch REGEDIT, and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\FTH - any program currently being protected by the FTH will be listed in the State key. Experienced users may also try tweaking the FTH settings to catch more problems, and perhaps improve system stability. A post on Microsoft's Ask The Performance Team blog (bit.ly/d1JStu) explains what the various FTH Registry keys mean.
20. Control devices and printers
Device Manager is a powerful tool for managing hardware, but it's also rather technical and intimidating, which is probably why Windows 7 has introduced a more basic alternative in the Devices and Printers applet. The first improvement is purely visual, with lengthy and cryptic device names replaced by large icons for major hardware items only (monitor, mouse, hard drive, printer and so on). The new applet can also save you time, though, by providing a quick and easy way to access relevant functions for each device. If you've got some printer-related issue, say, right-clicking your printer icon displays a list of useful options - See What's Printing, Printer Preferences, Printer Properties, Delete Printer Queue and more - and all you have to do is select whatever you need.
21. Automatically switch your default printer
Windows 7's location-aware printing allows the operating system to automatically switch your default printer as you move from one network to another. To set this up, first click Start, type Devices, and click the Devices and Printers link, Select a printer and click Manage Default Printers (this is only visible on a mobile device, like a laptop - you won't see it on a PC). Choose the Change My Default Printer When I Change Networks option, select a network, the default printer you'd like to use, and click Add. Repeat the process for other networks available, and pick a default printer for each one. And now, as you connect to a new network, Windows 7 will check this list and set the default printer to the one that you've defined.
22. Explore God Mode
Windows 7 has changed Control Panel a little, but it's still too difficult to locate all the applets and options that you might need. God Mode, however, while not being particularly godlike, does offer an easier way to access everything you could want from a single folder. To try this out, create a new folder and rename it to:
The first part, "Everything" will be the folder name, and can be whatever you want: "Super Control Panel", "Advanced", "God Mode" if you prefer. The extension, ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C, must be entered exactly as it is here, though, including the curly brackets. When you press [Enter] this part of the name will disappear, and double-clicking the new folder will display shortcuts to functions in the Action Centre, the Network and Sharing Centre, Power options, troubleshooting tools, user accounts and others - more than 260 options in total.
23. Right-click everything
At first glance Windows 7 bears a striking resemblance to Vista, but there's an easy way to begin spotting the differences - just right-click things. Right-click an empty part of the desktop, for instance, and you'll find a menu entry to set your screen resolution. No need to go browsing through the display settings any more. Right-click the Explorer icon on the taskbar for speedy access to common system folders: Documents, Pictures, the Windows folder, and more. And if you don't plan on using Internet Explorer then you probably won't want its icon permanently displayed on the taskbar. Right-click the icon, select 'Unpin this program from the taskbar', then go install Firefox, instead.
24. Display the old taskbar button context menu
Right-click a taskbar button, though, and you'll now see its jumplist menu. That's a useful new feature, but not much help if you want to access the minimise, maximise, or move options that used to be available. Fortunately there's an easy way to get the old context menu back - just hold down Shift as you right-click the taskbar button.
25. Desktop slideshow
Windows 7 comes with some very attractive new wallpapers, and it's not always easy to decide which one you like the best. So why not let choose a few, and let Windows display them all in a desktop slideshow? Right-click an empty part of the desktop, select Personalise > Desktop Background, then hold down Ctrl as you click on the images you like. Choose how often you'd like the images to be changed (anything from daily to once every 10 seconds), select Shuffle if you'd like the backgrounds to appear in a random order, then click Save Changes and enjoy the show.
26. RSS-powered wallpaper
And if a slideshow based on your standard wallpaper isn't enough, then you can always install a theme which extracts images from an RSS feed, and so ensures a regularly updated stream of top quality backgrounds (if you choose wisely, anyway). To see what's available, right-click an empty part of your desktop, select Personalise > Get more themes online, and click RSS Dynamic Themes in the left-hand list. Another option is to produce an RSS-based feed of your very own. Long Zheng has created a few sample themes to illustrate how it works. Jamie Thompson takes this even further, with a theme that always displays the latest BBC news and weather on your desktop. And MakeUseOf have a quick and easy tutorial showing how RSS can get you those gorgeous Bing photographs as your wallpaper.
