When asked about Win7, I find myself often speaking in the simplest terms to describe the product. I usually say "It has the eye-candy of Vista and the stability of XP". But really, it seems even more stable than XP ever was, except for Internet Explorer 8; that's just a dog. But I believe I have mentioned that here before.

Sometimes an even better part of something new is discovering some new trick that you can perform with it that you didn't know it would do when you bought it. Older Office users will know this as 'Easter Eggs', neat stuff embedded in the application that can only be accessed by special keystrokes or methods. That was Office: this is Win7. A little different concept, but cool none the less.

I have found two cool things that you can do in Win7 to gain extra functionality that MS did not advertise. I am hoping to find more, and if I do you will see it here, so stay tuned.

See attached files for God Mode and Restoring the Quick Launch Tool Bar from XP. Enjoy.

UPDATE: I have fixed the problem by adding the docs to a zip file.

Win7Goodies.zip (448.95 kb)

UPDATE 1/12/2010: Apparently, this is a developer tool that has been around for years. To see all their tricks, go here

About a month ago, Microsoft contacted me via email and asked me to take a survey giving feedback on their Partner Program, of which I am a member.
The benefit to me was that I would be entered into a drawing to win one of 5 HP Mini netbooks. As luck would have it, I won!

Congratulations! You’ve been selected as one of 5 winners in the Microsoft Partner Survey Sweepstakes!
Thank you for providing your valuable feedback about conducting business with Microsoft.
All partners who submitted feedback via the partner survey were entered to win a HP 5101 Netbook Computer
with Microsoft Windows 7 Professional and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta and you’ve won!

That kinda made my day. I will let you all know how this machine performs once I receive it.

UPDATE 02/22/2010: The HP Mini is a fantastic machine. Runs Office 2010 great, runs Skype great, fits in your pocket...well, almost. Get one, you won't be disappointed.