Computer Tip – Personalize your Desktop and Screensaver

Personalizing your desktop is not only simple, but it will make your computer run much faster and efficiently.

Do you remember your first computer where you had the ability to add shortcuts to your desktop? And you thought you were in heaven as you could add a shortcut to every program on your computer! The next thing you know, you can’t see the background on your monitor because the entire screen is covered with all those pretty little icons!

However, before you can abandon those pretty desktop icons and still have the convenience of finding your most-used programs quickly, you have to give yourself an easy way to access the shortcuts you use most often. Why not use the Quick Launch toolbar and clear your desktop?

If you do not have the Quick Launch toolbar displayed on your bottom taskbar, right click any blank area of the Taskbar, select Toolbars and then make sure there is a check mark next to Quick Launch. The Quick Launch toolbar will appear just to the right of the Start menu with at least one button on it: the Show Desktop button, which automatically minimizes all your open windows to the Taskbar and reveals the full Desktop when you click it. Now, that icon alone is worth its weight in gold!

Let’s clean up the desktop so you can see your background! It’s very quick and easy. Hold your left mouse button down and drag your desktop icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Now, this is the time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Do you really need the icons that are automatically placed on your desktop by some software installations? Probably at least 35% of the icons on your desktop are never used, so be a bit ruthless in your choice of icons to drag down to the Quick Launch toolbar. And if you have placed shortcuts on your desktop for frequently-used documents, these can also be dragged down to the Quick Launch toolbar.

What happens if you drag the wrong item or decide you don’t need it on your Quick Launch toolbar? Just right click on the icon; select delete and then yes to confirm you do want to delete it.

Depending on the number of Desktop icons you drag to the Quick Launch toolbar, things on the Taskbar could get crowded. To make more room, make the Taskbar a little bigger. Right click any blank area of the taskbar and make sure lock the taskbar is deselected. Place your pointer on the top edge of the taskbar so it turns into a double-headed arrow and drag upward.

Now that all those icons and shortcuts are accessible from the Quick Launch toolbar, you can clean the desktop. The simplest and safest way to do this is to hide the Desktop icons. Right-click any blank area of the desktop, choose Arrange Icons By, and then select Show Desktop Icons to uncheck it. In a few moments, all your Desktop icons will disappear.

But why not delete or move the icons instead of just hiding them? Several of the icons, such as My Computer, Recycle Bin, and My Network Places, cannot and should not be deleted because they are central to the functionality of Windows. Leave these three icons on the desktop and then delete the remaining unnecessary icons.

If you stop here you’ll no doubt notice how much more efficient it can be to work from the Quick Launch bar rather than from a cluttered Desktop. However, you might want to consider going a step further and removing your Desktop background picture if you have one, substituting the background with a color. Right-click any blank area of the desktop, click Properties/Desktop. Under background, choose none; under color, choose a background color that is easy on the eyes and contrasts with your Windows color scheme. Click Apply to see if you like the color; if not, choose another color. Once you find one you like, click OK

Now that you have a nice icon-free desktop, there is one more option and that is to hide the taskbar. Hide the Taskbar, and you have the maximum desktop space possible at your disposal.

When you get those icons and that background out of the way, the taskbar is suddenly an eyesore, interrupting what would otherwise be a totally clean screen. You can hide the Taskbar so that it appears only when you need it. Right-click any blank area of the taskbar and choose properties. On the Taskbar tab, select Auto-Hide the taskbar, and click apply and then ok. The taskbar disappears, but you can display it when you need it by hovering your pointer over to the bottom edge of the screen. Until that point, however, your screen is completely blank. A hidden Taskbar is not for everyone. If you’re not a careful mouser, you may find yourself displaying the taskbar whenever you work near the bottom of the screen. But it is the ultimate in desktop neatness, and it wins back some extra space for your programs.

Make Your Screensaver Uniquely Your Own

If you remove your desktop background as part of a computer clean up and then find that you really do miss that background, you can bring it back as a screensaver which will give you the best of both worlds – you still have the background but it is no longer intrusive. But there is more – you can set the screensaver to sequence through several of your favorite pictures, which is something your desktop background can’t do. Let’s go ahead and set the screensaver for your favourite pictures.

Click the Start button and choose My Documents. In the left side of the window, click on “make a new folder;” name this new folder Screensaver. Navigate through your folders to find the picture or pictures you want to use as a screensaver and copy them into this new Screensaver folder. (If you can’t live without some of the Windows photo backgrounds as your screensaver, you will find them in the C:\WINDOWS folder but be very careful and be sure to copy them to your new Screensaver folder. Do not move them!)

Now that you have a selection of photos in the screensaver folder, right-click your new blank Desktop; click Properties and click the Screen Saver tab. From the screensaver drop-down menu on the left under the picture of the computer, select My Pictures Slideshow and then click Settings, (if you have only one picture in your Screensaver folder, you may want to set the how often should pictures change interval to something longer, such as one minute; otherwise, leave it at the default selection.. Under the how big should pictures be tab choose the appropriate setting. (usually 100%). Click Browse, select your Screensaver folder, and click ok.

And, finally, the last step. Make sure that “use transition effects between pictures is” selected and that the other three options are unchecked or not selected. Then click ok. Back on the Screensaver tab, you’ll see a preview of your screensaver in the small sample monitor. If you are satisfied with your preview, click on apply and ok.

Now, isn’t that much better? A clean desktop and your own personal screensaver!