Start Menu Tweaks

Hi there to all,

Every time that I get a machine in for repair, the first thing I do before anything else is to tweak the Taskbar and Startup Panel to my way of working. I find that this is more productive for me and not least saves not only time, but a good few mouse clicks as well. When you are working on PC's all day like I am,this is when you get the real benefit of these seemingly insignificant little tweaks.

For example, to change your screen saver requires these default setting steps, Start menu (1),control panel (2),pick a category (3),appearance(4),screen saver(5), that's 5 clicks, before you can make any changes. With this tweak however, you only need to do, start menu (1),control panel(mouseover), display (2), screensaver (3). In addition, you get to see ALL the Control Panel options on your mouseover of the control panel tab in one, top to bottom, scrolling popup and this is the real plus. OK so it is only 2 clicks saved in this example, but hey, its still 2 clicks saved!

Multiply this over your session time and the saved clicks become considerable and saves an aching finger!

If you don't know, here's how to achieve them.

For XP

1.   Right click on your Taskbar and select Properties
2.   Click Startmenu, click Customise
3.   Click Advanced
4.   Select 'Show as a Menu' on as many options as you wish.
5.   Click OK and OK again.Done!

For Vista/Win7 step 3 is not required.

All the changes that you make will now appear when you click on your start menu and only need a mouseover to show you all available options under that tab.

Of all the machines that I have repaired, not one single client has wanted this little tweak removed on return, not any of them knew you could do things like this! and whenever I have returned to them on another job they still had it set up so they must have seen the value of this little tweak.

I hope it can be of use to those who did not know about it until now.

Cheers,

ticker