Not quite prepared to upgrade your operating system from Windows 7? No big deal, Windows 7 is pretty efficient. Below are a few tips to take advantage of it before you take the plunge into another OS.
Access videos from your Start menu: You most likely know you can access your pictures and music from the Start menu in Windows 7. What you possibly don’t know is that you can personalize it to enable you to access your videos also. To achieve this you must first right-click on the Start button and click “Properties.” Then navigate to the Start Menu tab and click “Customize.” Once the dialogue box pops up, scroll to the bottom and find the videos section. Select “Display as a link” and click “OK” and “OK” again.
Modify your Shut Down button: You know that your computer’s Shut Down button turns off your computer. However, what if you almost never shut down your computer? A little known fact: you are able to customize your Shut Down button so that when you press it, it carries out another action, everything from restarting your computer to putting it in sleep mode. To accomplish this, right-click the Start button and pick “Properties.” On the Start Menu tab, select the “Power button action” drop-down menu. After that you can select what action you’d like the power button to take as a default.
Add some privacy to your online searching: When you search Internet Explorer, your computer will instantly display the latest searches that you have performed. Maybe you’d rather not have this information accessible to other users. Luckily, you can customize Windows 7 to make this happen. You can switch off the “recent searches” feature from the Start menu. Once you pull up the Start menu’s search box, type GPEDIT.MSC and press “Enter.” This will set the Group Policy Editor in motion. Find the “User configuration” option. Then choose “Administrative Templates,” “Windows Components,” and “Windows Explorer.” Once you are here, you can double-click “Turn off display of recent search entries in the Windows Explorer search box.” Then select “Enabled” from the screen that comes up next. Then click “OK.” You will now benefit from greater privacy when searching the Internet.
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