Post your desktop

[Stephen Coates]

Not sure I would like a vertical taskbar, but I can see the advantage on a widescreen monitor.

I've never quite seen the advantage of widescreen monitors. Timelines are a good example as harrison mentions, but for most of my use (which usually involves web pages/documents/programme listings), a monitor which is taller is better.

[Bloodwych]

You're right Stephen - the only real benefits are video and films, if you watch them on your PC from time to time. Games also look good in widescreen, so it's more of a media thing, as is the actual 1080p resolution thrown around these days.

But as you said, for general work you need the vertical and squarer resolutions but those are getting phased out in favour of cheaper 1080p mass-produced panels.

[Stephen Coates]

I've been looking at LCDs recently*. It seems the majority are 16:9 and have a resolution of 1920x1080, for HD stuff. Of course that will probably be fine for a lot of people's needs, as it is still bigger than 1280x960 and 1280x1024, with the advantage of being able to play HD video.

But there are a few around which are 16:10 and have resolutiuons of 1920x1200 which would be a lot better than 1920x1080.

*There is a small possibility that I may get one, if someone else helps pay for it.

[Teho]

Hadn't even crossed my mind, but when you mentioned it I immediately dragged it over to the right side of the screen. It's been like that now for a total time of about a minute and a half and I'm allready convinced it's a better solution.

Way back, during the Win9x era I used the Office toolbar in the same manner. So it's not totally unfamiliar to have it there. Just never thought about it. You could move it around in XP too though, couldn't you?

[Bloodwych]

Ho Teho, why yes you certainly could. And many people did, by accident and design.

It never worked quite as well on 4:3 monitors as you lost too much horizontal res and even on widescreen the lack of stacked icons and wider windows bars with labels made it less efficient, sometimes awkward looking. People did find good solutions in XP however using the vertical bar.

You can also add a quick launch type addition too, a bit like the one in XP. Place a folder on your desktop called Launch or something. Then copy or drag your desktop shortcuts inside. I drag mine as I don't like too many icons on the desktop.

Then right click on the taskbar and create a new toolbar. Select the Launch folder on your desktop in the requester and watch as all the icons appear, just like the old quick launch. You can remove text labels and make them small - plus they auto arrange into neat columns depending on the width of the taskbar. I'll add a picture here once I'm finished.

[Harrison]

No need to go to that trouble to recreate the old Quick Launch bar on the task bar. The Quick Launch bar is still built into Win 7, but deactivated as standard. I have it working in Win 7 for apps that I don't use every day, so don't want in the quick launch always there icons.

To reactivate the Quick Launch bar in Windows 7 just follow the simple steps at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975784

[Bloodwych]

Thanks Harrision, that's exactly the same method as I mentioned, but using the original quicklaunch folder rather than a custom one on your desktop. Nice to see it in pics. I prefer using the desktop folder as it gets rid of all my icons once dragged into there and automatically positions them into the taskbar.

Good to know however quicklaunch is still around, as the "pinned" apps on the start menu don't wrap properly when it fills up (ie you expand the taskbar, instead of lining up into columns, they just get wider and a scroll bar appears). See here: http://blog.tarunaggrawal.com/2010/0...-of-windows-7/

That's why quick laucnch is still a useful feature.

[gkjand]