I have a few things I like to do to tweak a system for how I use it daily, these tips may not be for you but check check check it out and see… What are your favorite little tricks?? By all means, do tell 
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(1) Snipping Tool
The “print screen” key on your keyboard is good if you want to capture your entire desktop, or if you’re savvy you can use alt+prntscrn to grab just the current window, but the Snipping Tool in Vista takes things to a much appreciated next level. It’s a super-simple-riffic way to capture any rectangle portion of the screen you want and instantly copy it to the clipboard for use elsewhere or save it as an image. If you want to go power-user style, you can draw some notes on it with different colored pens or do some highlighting.
Don’t know where the tool is?? Open the start menu, type “snip,” and POOF there it is.
(2) Quick Launch Bar Hotkeys
A little known secret about the quick launch bar is that every item is linked to a numbered hotkey in the order it is placed. So for example, since I often use the snipping tool, I have it in my quicklaunch as the first item. If I hit “win+1,” then I have an instant snipping tool instance to grab whatever I need quickly. Similarly, I open IE with “win+5.”
(3) Keep it Snappy by disabling window animation
I am a fan of the new Aero look in Windows Vista, but I sometimes feel like the animations—while pretty to look at and everything—are just slowing me down. I have found system responsiveness feels downright snappy when I turn them off.
Go to the control panel and in the search at the top right, type in “effects” and the only result should be “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows.” Click that bad boy and uncheck the “animate windows when minimizing and maximizing.” I do some other customization in here as well… but be careful not to turn it all off, or you will lose the look-and-feel you and I like so much 
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(4) Change the power button’s default behavior
This one is huge for me since I have a laptop and one of the first things I do is change what happens when I close screen. In addition, I like to fully shut down most of the time since I have an SSD for my primary hard disk, full shut down and boot happens in about 20 seconds or so, so I don’t often use sleep. To facilitate this, I change the behavior of my start menu and hardware power button to fully shut down rather than hibernate.
Open control panel and do a search for “power.” The second option should be “change what the power buttons do.” There you will be able to select “shut down” instead of “sleep.”
If you want to get extra-fancy, open control panel, search for “power,” click “power options,” click “change plan settings” for whichever plan you are in, click “change advanced power settings.” From here you can scroll down and change the button of the start menu from sleep to fully shut down.
(5) Restore a previous version of a file
This used to be exclusive to enterprise level customers using server OS technology (it’s pretty much Shadow Copy). Let’s say you accidentally saved over that paper you have been working on for weeks and want to revert back to what you had a few days ago… well this is the ticket. Just right click it, select “restore previous version,” and select the one from the date that makes sense to you. Presto chango, you got it.
