Windows 7 snappier on netbook

Written by Roshi

There are dozens of tips and tricks available on the web to boost the performance of Windows 7 on netbooks. It is difficult to pick the best among them, but here are some tips I found quite useful on my netbook. After trying them out, working on this new operating system became much easier and faster on my netbook. Let's explore them here.

Microsoft has tweaked its operating system to suit the netbook users, but it sure has dozens of useful features.

Turn off Aero

Aero Snap allows you to automatically minimize, maximize or resize the application windows by simply dragging and dropping them to screen corners. Dragging towards right will reduce the size of application window to half the screen size while dragging to the top will maximize to full screen. You can easily turn it off by following these simple steps.

• Go to start menu and open the control panel
• Click on ‘Ease of access center’
• Click on ‘Make the mouse easier to use’

• Now select the option ‘Prevent windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge of the screen’

• Click OK and Aero Snap will be turned off

You can also disable some of the unnecessary Windows features from your netbook by following the suggestions in our earlier post Windows 7 tips and tricks.

Sticky notes

While there are hundreds of applications that offer sticky notes option for your netbook desktop, it is really great to have this option built into your operating system. It is easy to activate this option from the start menu. You can also modify the color of your sticky notes by right clicking the note and picking a new color. There are also keyboard shortcuts to change the formatting and text style of the sticky notes such as press Ctrl + B, Ctrl + I, or Ctrl + U to bold, italicize or underline the text. You can also increase or decrease the font size by Ctrl + shift + >/<. You can also insert bullets or numbered list in the sticky notes by pressing Ctrl + Shift + L once or twice. You can also strikethrough an entry by Ctrl + T.

Useful keyboard shortcuts

Windows 7 is loaded with a lot of useful keyboard shortcuts so that you can do dozens of things without moving your hands from the keyboard. You can now reduce the dependency on the mouse while typing. I found this quite useful.

Windows key +E to open a new Internet explorer window
Windows key +E to open the Display Switcher applet
Windows key +Spacebar to view the desktop
Windows key + Plus (+) to turn on magnifier to zoom the desktop
Windows key + Minus (-) to zoom out the desktop
Windows key + Left/Right to reduce the active window to half and shift to the left or right side of the screen
While working on Windows explorer, you can press Alt +P to turn on the preview pane.

There are more interesting keyboard shortcuts for the Windows 7; you can check all of them here.

XP/Vista taskbar

In XP and Vista, the taskbar takes less part of screen space compared with the new taskbar in Windows 7. I prefer to get my old taskbar back as screen space is such a hitch in netbooks. You can easily bring back the familiar look of XP or Vista by these simple steps:

• Go to the ‘Start’ button, right click and select ‘Properties’
• Click the ‘Taskbar’ and tick the ‘Use small icons’ option
• Now click ‘Apply’

Quick Launch

More than the taskbar, I miss my tiny little Quick Launch bar, which provides an easy shortcut to a number of applications I use quite often on my netbook. You can get your Quick Launch back by following these simple instructions.

• Right click the taskbar, take the mouse over the ‘Toolbar’ option and click on ‘New toolbar’
• In the folder dialog box, enter this: ‘%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch’

• Click on the ‘Select folder’ button and you'll now have your quick launch bar next to your taskbar

• Drag and drop the application to Quick Launch to create their shortcuts.

Windows 7 has a lot of offer in netbooks with these simple, but useful shortcuts. It actually made my experience with Windows 7 more enjoyable on my netbook.

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