Thursday Tip: The Cool Switch

I was reading some information about Windows 7 and they talked about the entry-level version and its ability to run no more than three applications at a time. That would be painful for me since I'm always running at least five apps and probably more. Luckily that entry level version is probably not the version any of us will use. I know I won't.

When you are running a bunch of applications, you need a quick way to switch from one to another. That's where the cool switch comes into play. Just press Alt + Tab and you'll see the icons of all running programs. Continue to press it and you can cycle through each of the icons until you get to the program you want to bring to the front. No, you don't need Windows 7 for this cool feature. It works just fine in Windows XP. Added in Windows Vista was Ctrl + Tab that actually shows a thumbnail of each application. Of course you have to be running all of the machine-slowing graphics features (called Aero) in Vista for this feature to work. I just stick to Alt + Tab and life is good.