28 MAXIMUMPC | MAR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
XP/Vista Tips
The following tips don’t discriminate—they will improve your computing experience equally, whether
you’re rocking Microsoft’s new or old OSTAKE CONTROLMake Your Own Control
PanelWe’re willing to bet you never use half the
items in the Control Panel, but did you know
you can make a Control Panel that refl ects
your particular habits? Here’s how: Right-
click the Start menu and select Explore.
Create a new folder and give it a descriptive
name, such as Custom Control Panel. Drag
and drop only the tools you’ll actually use
from the original Control Panel into your new
one, renaming as you see fi t. Change the icon
so it stands out in the Start menu.PICK ME! PICK ME!Disable Highlighting New
ProgramsEvery new program in XP and Vista gets high-
lighted in the Start menu as if to say, “Hey,
remember when you installed me?” That’s
great for those affl icted with extremely short
attention spans, but not much use for the rest
of us. To rid your Start menu of these unsight-
ly reminders, right-click the Start button and
select Properties, select the Start Menu tab,
and click Customize. In Vista, scroll down and
uncheck “Highlight newly installed programs.”
You’ll fi nd the same option in XP under the
Advanced tab.DEMAND A NEW MENUAdd Entries to the Send To Menu
Moving fi les with the Send To com-
mand can save oodles of time,
but it doesn’t do you any good if
the destination you’re looking for
doesn’t appear in the menu. To add
your own destinations, select Run
from the Start menu (type Run in
the search box on Vista) and type
shell:sendto. Create a shortcut
of the folder or program you want to
appear and move it to the Send To
folder you just opened.WHAT A DRAG!Minimize Windows and Drag Files with Ease
Ever grab a fi le on
your desktop only to
realize the destination
folder’s sitting behind
an open window? To
get around this, drag
the fi le to an empty
space in the taskbar
and all open windows
will minimize, allowing
you to move the fi le
wherever you want.
Using this method,
you can hover fi les
over minimized win-
dows to restore them.RESOURCE AUDITMonitor CPU and RAM Usage
We can already keep
tabs on our CPU and
RAM through the Task
Manager, but there’s a
better way. CPUMon
(free, http://tinyurl
.com/363k6f ) displays
the same information
but ups the ante with
an adjustable, unob-
trusive transparent graph, CPU-speed monitoring, statistics that include the
average CPU and memory usage, and a handful of other options.WINDOWS TIPS