One of our community members, Technogran, posted a comment on my recent Windows 7 blog post asking about capturing menus that come up when you left- or right-click on something.  The product I use for this is called Snagit by TechSmith.  I put together this quick little video that shows how you can use this great product to grab almost anything you want off your screen.

Snagit Demo Video

Have you tried it?  What do you think?

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

I just posted an entry over on the Community Clubhouse Windows Live Space about three of our newest Windows Community members.  Click on over to see who’s new!

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

P.S. If you want to join us, you can learn more here.

Several weeks back, I introduced you to the Windows Gurus.  Two of our Gurus are back and starring in a great little video that explains SkyDrive:

Windows Live SkyDrive Video

New YouTube Feature Alert:  Try clicking on the up arrow on the lower right corner of the video above to watch in HQ mode (High Quality). 

If you haven’t tried SkyDrive out yet, please give it a go and let me know what you think.

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

A few months back, I blogged about a cool website created by our Windows Live colleagues in the UK.  The site lets you create a stylish new display picture of yourself to use on Windows Live as well as emoticons for Windows Live Messenger.  There are also a whole range of celebrity characters you can pick as well.  The site has been very, very popular. 

I’m happy to report that this idea has “hopped the pond” and is now available with a whole new set of famous characters from the US.  Check out the new site at http://www.make-me-mini.com/.

Happy minimizing!

Marcus, Windows Community Manager

I’ve been using Windows 7 for about a week now.  That’s about 7 days with Windows 7.  So in keeping with that numerological theme, here are 7 cool things (in no particular order) that I’ve uncovered over the past 7 days using Windows 7.

1. Progress shows in the icons on the taskbar.  Like when you’re downloading something in IE for instance, you see that progress reflected on the IE icon.   It’s a little thing, but a nice touch.

2. Program-specific jump lists replacing general recent documents list.  Now I can see my recent documents for specific programs as a jump list right on the start menu:

3. Right-click on an icon in the task-bar gives you quick access to tasks for that app and most-recently accessed items.  Here is an example from Windows Live Messenger:

4. Gadgets are now free to roam all over your desktop.  I’ve got two groups on either side of this illustration below, but you can put them anywhere now:

5. While that tropic image is nice, I also love the new Windows Themes and slide-show desktop wallpaper that cycles through the images you choose:

6. The multi-monitor features are improved as well, including built in rotation for those of us that like our monitors in portait mode:

7. Improved performance over Windows Vista.  So far my start-up, shut-down, hibernate, sleep, resume, and just overall day-to-day tasks all seem more snappy.  And this is just the beta.  I can only hope the performance continues to stay solid if not improve a little bit more.

What are your top finds in Windows 7 so far? 

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

P.S.  To find out more about Windows 7 or to download your own beta copy, just visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows7. 

Earlier in the week, I embarked on installing the Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) on my two work laptops.  After a few days with the new OS, I’m generally happy with how things are running.  But I do have a few gripes.  I’ve chronicled my experience below and plan to share more with you as I uncover new things about Windows 7.

First, a few bits of background.  I have an older Toshiba Portege M200 that I keep as a back-up and testing machine, and I installed on it first.  After I was satisfied that one worked, I moved on to my main machine, a Lenovo ThinkPad T61.  Also worth noting is that I work at Microsoft, so I have the luxury of IT support for the beta.  I used our IT department’s recommended deployment method – WDS – which involves booting to the network and installing a fresh image of Windows 7 and other important apps and tools.

Toshiba Portege M200

The Toshiba upgrade ran into a hiccup that left me at an unbootable state, so I ended up doing that one twice.  The hiccup?  I thought I was plugged into a live powerstrip, but it turned out I wasn’t.  The machine ran out of battery during the upgrade, and I wasn’t really watching it that closely – User Error!  Important safety tip:  Always make sure you’re running on real AC power when doing an upgrade.  The second time went smoothly.  I just needed to manually add in some wireless networking drivers, and everything was solid.  Here is a brief video showing the cold-boot performance of this old laptop:

Toshiba Portege M200 Boots Windows 7:

Thanks to a member of our community, Ryan, for inspiration to do a boot video like this.  You can see his video up here on YouTube.

Lenovo ThinkPad T61

My installation on the ThinkPad went silky smooth.  Since this is a newer laptop, our IT image was installed with more goodies, including almost all the drivers I needed.  I only encountered three issues after the install, and only one of them is still bugging me as I write this.

First, the biometric fingerprint reader built into the ThinkPad didn’t have any drivers or supporting software installed.  I like this little fingerprint reader as it makes logging in that much faster (no typing passwords).  I tried installing the software from Lenovo’s website, but that didn’t do the trick either.  To my pleasant surprise, however, the next day I booted up this machine, the new Windows 7 Action Center told me a new driver was available:

This aptly named Action Center is a nice step forward as it becomes the one place to check for anything the PC requires (backups, anti-virus, driver updates, etc.). 

Second, I couldn’t get Office Communicator to work.  Twitter came to the rescue here, however, with @screwdriver reminding me to install the 2007 R2 version, which worked like a charm.  I was using an older version. 

My third problem is the one that continues to linger.  When running in multi-monitor mode, my Aero video performance degrades over time, to the point where I start getting strange behavior on my desktop and on any running applications.  Here is an example:

Another luxury of working at Microsoft is you can look over the Exchange Global Address List and find various group distribution lists that can help with things like this.  I’ve sent this issue to a nVidia group and I’m working with them to see if we can diagnose the problem. 

Summary

All-in-all, I’m impressed by this beta release so far.  And I’m not just saying that because my paycheck happens to come from a large software company in Redmond, WA.  I’ve been beta testing software for years now, and this beta is one of the best I’ve seen.  In summary:

• Pros:  Solid performance (better than Windows Vista, even on older hardware), slideshow desktop, action center, jump lists, and go-anywhere gadgets.  I’ll blog about each of these more in the future.
• Cons:  Multi-monitor graphics issues (hey, it is still a beta after all)

Two other members of our community have blogged about Windows 7 as well.  Check out this post by Technogran and this post by Greg to see what they think.

If you want to learn more about Windows 7 and download it yourself, just visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows7.

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

Lots of great stuff being announced tonight at CES 2009 in Las Vegas.  You can read more about it and view the keynote and other videos up on Microsoft PressPass.  Here are my top-of-mind thoughts right now:

• Windows Live gets some BIG partners!  Dell will be preloading Windows Live Essentials and Facebook will be sharing their social networking content with Windows Live.
• Windows 7 looks to be the most solid beta of a Windows client operating system I’ve seen in a long time.  I plan to install it on my primary PCs at work later this week.
• Our very own Charlotte Jones rocked the keynote with an awesome demo of Windows 7 and Windows Live.  You might remember Charlotte from our recent conversation about Windows Live Events.

More to come as CES continues to roll…

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

A member of our Windows Live Community contacted me today with an interesting question.  He was using Windows Live Events and wondered why there were options (shown at right) for adding the event to Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, Yahoo! Calendar, and Google Calendar, but not Windows Live Calendar. 

That one definitely had me scratching my head.  Surely we’d integrate with our own stuff, right?

I contacted some of the members of the team that work in these areas and they confirmed for me that Windows Live Events that you create or attend are automatically added to your Windows Live Calendar.  We all agreed that this is not very clear or “discoverable” (a term we use a lot for easy to find/use/understand).  Hopefully we can improve that in the future.

Have you found any other interesting integration features?  Join our Windows Live Community at http://www.windowslive.com/clubhouse/join and let the world know.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager