Gadgets

If any of you miss the gadgets in Windows Vista, do not mourn, they are still available.
Right-click the desktop and select “Gadgets” in the drop-down menu.
To add a gadget to the desktop, click and drag this out of the window to the desktop.
To remove a gadget, click the top icon that appears when you mouse over the gadget.
To move a gadget, click and drag the bottom icon that appears when you mouse over the gadget.
To modify settings for a gadget, such as the timing of a clock, click the middle icon that appears when you mouse over the gadget.

If you want more gadgets, click on “Get more gadgets online” at bottom of the gadget window.

The “Start” button

The “Start” button is still in the left corner of the taskbar.
When we click this, it unfolds a menu that contains a number of standard applications.
This list will automatically adjust to the 10 last used applications.
If you wish to keep an application in the Start menu, you can attach it to this list.
Right click on the application and choose “Pin to Start Menu” on the pop-up menu (1).
This places the application on top of the menu in the “Pinned Applications” (2).
The sticky applications are separated by a light gray line from the non sticky applications.
If you wish to remove a sticky application from the set list, right click it and choose “Unpin from Start menu” from the pop-up menu.
To remove an application from the “normal” list, right click it and choose “Remove from this list”.

To view all the programs that are installed on your PC, click the button “All programs”, at the bottom of this list (3). To return click the “Back” button.

To search programs, position the cursor in the search box (4) and start typing.
Once you’ve typed something, Windows will display the results in a results list.

On the right side of the Start menu, we find a number of standard folders and components (5).

For the computer to shut down we click the “Shut down” button.
Clicking on the right pointing arrow next to the “Shut down” button gives us a list where we have some choices.

The first is “Switch User”. More about different users in a later lesson.

The second option is “Log off”. With this button we close all open programs and close the computer.

The third option locks the computer, the fourth option restarts the computer, and the last option places the computer into sleep mode.
If you leave your computer idle for a long time, you should use this option to turn the computer off. This way, you do not always need to start and you can start working immediately.

Whenever a black arrow is shown (8) next to an application in the “Start” menu, this means that there is a submenu of recently opened documents in this application (9), we call it “Jump Lists”.
These documents can be pinned down, so they always stay in this submenu (10) (read jump list) and are not removed from the list.
If you wish to “pin” a file from the list, move the mouse pointer over the file, and click again on the icon right next to the name of the file.
You can detach a file from the list of pinned files back into the recent files list.

If you have recently installed a program on your computer, it appears in the “Start” menu with an orange background.

Adjust the “Start” menu

if you wish to adjust the “Start” menu, right click this button, and select “Properties” from the popup menu. In the dialog box that appears, select the “Start Menu” tab.
Clicking on the button “Customize”, opens a second dialog box with several options that we can turn on or off by selecting it or not.
In this dialog box you can also find the option to set the number of recently opened programs and items to be displayed.
Clicking on the “Shut down” button opens a drop-down menu where we can set the feature of the on / off button. Do not be afraid, whatever option you set here, you always have the downward pointing arrow where you can choose what you want to do.
The two options in the section “Privacy” are self explanatory.

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