Note: This is for Windows 7 users only. In Windows XP and Vista, when you use the Windows Live Mail client, you can right-click the icon at the bottom so that it only appears as such when the app is minimized: When using the Windows Live Messenger, by default it will also have a small icon: However the problem is that these Windows Live applications do not...

One really useful feature of Windows which I notice a lot of people do not take advantage of is the Quick Launch bar. This is the area in your taskbar which has the icons you can use to open programs. For many people I can see why they would not use it because between the programs they have open on the taskbar and the system tray, there really isn’t too...

If you find yourself using the Windows Calculator or Excel often to do simple math operations, a tool you might be interested in is Taskbar Calculator. This free tool does just what you would expect: adds a small calculator to your Windows taskbar. If you look at the reviews, you can see some users complain that the tool only performs basic functions (add,...

By default, the Windows taskbar is only a ‘single line’ high. For lightweight users, this is typically ok, but if you have lots of items in your System Tray or you like to make use of Quick Launch, then you will find yourself with not much room for open programs. A simple solution is to increase the height of your taskbar. By increasing the height,...

Although I’m 99% sure the ATI manager software has this ability also, with the nView software by nVidia you can easily make your Windows XP taskbar transparent. Here’s how it’s done: 1. Download and install the latest nVidia driver set. 2. Go to the Control Panel and double-click the NVIDIA nView Desktop Manager icon. See below for example. ...

To show the date in the Windows XP taskbar all the time (without the use of any additional sofware) you can extend it “two tiers” high and it will display the date. The default taskbar looks like this.Right-click an empty area and make sure “Lock the Taskbar” is not checked.A small border will appear above the taskbar. Place your...

For the most part, most Windows users keep their taskbar at the default location which is the bottom of the screen. Of course you can change this in several ways.If you want to hide the taskbar when you are not using it, right click on the taskbar, select Properties and then check the box to auto-hide. This will make the taskbar “disappear” until...