See full-size previews of open windows via taskbar thumbnails

If you’re a Windows Vista veteran, you’re familiar with the taskbar thumbnails feature—hover over an item in the taskbar, and you see a miniature version of that program’s window. (Sometimes the thumbnail is even live-animated, for example if you’re looking at a video window.) In Windows 7, these thumbnail previews are still around, but the new OS takes the preview a big step further, letting you see a full-size preview of the window without “committing” and clicking on it to make it active. That way, you can quickly check info on a buried-but-open window and immediately revert to the window you currently have active. In the sample picture below, we're hovering over the taskbar thumbnail and seeing a preview of the Internet Explorer page circled:

Though it’s easy, it’s not immediately apparent how to do this. Hover your cursor over the program’s taskbar icon, which brings up the thumbnail-size preview. Then move your mouse cursor to hover over the thumbnail preview itself. When you do, the relevant window will come to the fore, and all others will fade to the background. When you move the cursor off the thumbnail preview, your desktop window arrangement reverts to its previous state. And if you click on the thumbnail preview, you can bring that window to the front. Incidentally, Windows 7 also lets you close the program window straight from the thumbnail, using the red “x” at upper right or by clicking the centre button on your mouse—typically the scroll wheel, if it has one.

Select multiple items in Windows Explorer the easy way

It’s a familiar problem: You’re facing a folder full of MP3 files or holiday photos, and you want to copy out (or perhaps delete) only certain ones en masse. Everyone knows the old way: Hold down the Ctrl key while you click on each file with the mouse, highlighting the specific ones on which you want to take action. We’ve all been there, and we’ve all had it go wrong: Take your eye off it for a second, and you deselect (or select) the whole group. Time to start over again!

There’s an easier way in Windows 7, though you need to dig a bit to activate it. In a given folder, click on the Organize button at the top of the Windows Explorer window. Choose the Folder and search options entry from the menu that ensues, to launch the Folder Options dialog box. You’ll see three tabs; click the one called View. In the Advanced settings list that appears, scroll down and look for the entry Use check boxes to select items. Make sure it has, um, a check mark in it, then hit OK. We circled the appropriate option here:

In the relevant folder, if you’re looking at it in a file-thumbnail view, you’ll now see empty check boxes next to the files’ individual thumbnails. Otherwise, if you’re in a list or detail view, check boxes will appear if you hover your cursor just to the left of the line items, like they do here:

Check these boxes off, as desired, to select multiple files in a folder for mass action. It’s a lot more accurate and less nerve-wracking.