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Sunday, November 15, 2009

Windows 7 – Less Anger, More Productivity


I’ve been running Windows 7 for over a week now on my laptop and I’m really happy with it. It is much better than Vista. My gold standard – for better or for worse – is that now my laptop can sleep and wake up properly. Hooray. I feel like I’m more productive with Windows 7 because I’m not fighting the operating system and getting mad about frozen programs or strange behavior.

One of the mantras I’m trying to adopt with Windows 7 is to USE THE KEYBOARD and do less with the mouse. In that spirit here are some keyboard shortcuts:

General Shortcuts (Vista and Windows 7)
WIN = open start menu
SHFT+F10 =right click on selected item
ALT+F4 = close a window
SHFT+CTRL+CLICK = open as admin

Windows 7 Navigation Specific
WIN + # = open program stack in taskbar
WIN + Arrow Key = move current window, e.g. left arrow key snaps window to the left
WIN + Up Arrow = Maximize the active window.
WIN + Down Arrow = Minimize or restore the active window.
WIN + Home Key = close all windows except current
WIN + Space bar = Make all windows transparent, maybe you have a pretty background picture?
WIN + T = open taskbar entry
WIN + G = bring gadgets to front
WIN + = (magnify)
WIN + - (un-magnify)
CTRL + ALT + Arrow Key = rotate screen (up arrow is the "normal" orientation)

Browser (IE 7+)
CTRL+F4 close current tab
CTRL+TAB cycle through tabs
CTRL+E = get focus of search box
CTRL+T = new tab
F4 = highlight URL

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