Using Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts on Windows XP

Lifehacker had put together a program the will enable Windows 7's keyboard shortcuts on Windows XP systems. With this program installed, you can combine the Windows key with any arrow keys to arrange your applications on the desktop like you do in Windows 7. Pretty cool!

Productive Keystrokes in Microsoft Windows 7

Microsoft Windows 7 has introduced many useful but not so well-known features. One of my favorites is they added more actions to the Windows Key. Just with a few combinations with the Windows Key, you can make your computing more productive.

Here is a few I found. If you find more, feel free to write me a comment and I will add it to the list.

Desired Action	Shortcut Keys
Lock your computer	Windows Key + L
Maximize window.	Windows Key + Up Arrow
Resize window to occupy the left side of the screen.	Windows Key + Left Arrow
Resize window to occupy the right side of the screen.	Windows Key + Right Arrow
Minimize the window.	Windows Key + Down Arrow
Take a quick look at the desktop.	Windows Key + Spacebar
Minimize/Restore all windows.	Windows Key + D
Minimize/Restore all windows but the active window.	Windows Key + Home
Start or switch to a pinned program in taskbar.	Windows Key + number
Start new instance of a pinned program in taskbar.	Windows Key + Shift + number
Switch to the last active window of the pinned program in taskbar.	Windows Key + Ctrl + number
Open the Jump List for the pinned program.	Windows Key + Alt + number

Tips for Setting up Cygwin on Windows

Create these useful symbolic links:

ln -s "/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/username/My Documents/" ~/docs
ln -s "/cygdrive/c/Documents and Settings/username/Desktop" ~/desktop
ln -s '/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Adobe/Acrobat 6.0/Acrobat/Acrobat.exe' ~/bin

To add ~/bin to your path,

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH

You can put this in your .bash_profile or .bashrc file.

Useful aliases:

alias open='cygstart'     # for Mac OS X
alias start='cygstart'    # for Windows

Re-run setup.exe to keep Cygwin up-to-date.

To find out the latest changes on your system,

ls -lt /usr/share/doc/Cygwin | head