Windows 7: Up and Running

Built-in Applications

In the previous section, you saw the suite of applications that you can download from Microsoft free of charge. Though the number of bundled applications has apparently decreased, there are still a number of cool applications shipped with Windows 7. The following sections describe some of them in detail.

Snipping Tool

Beginning with Windows Vista, Microsoft shipped an application called the Snipping Tool, which is included in Windows 7 as well. The Snipping Tool is a screen-capture tool.

Note

Longtime users of Windows know that they can capture screenshots easily using the Print Scrn key (or Alt-Print Scrn for capturing the current active window) on the keyboard. But the Snipping Tool makes it easy for you to capture specific parts of your screen directly without needing to further edit your screenshots. It also allows you to directly save the screenshots to file.

To launch the Snipping Tool, select Start menu→Snipping Tool. You will see the window shown in Figure 5-16.

Figure 5-16. The Snipping Tool

Clicking the arrow next to the New button reveals four options in which you can capture your screenshots:

Free-form Snip

You can capture your screen by simply moving your mouse to designate the area you want to capture; it can be of any shape.

Rectangular Snip

You capture a rectangular portion of your screen.

Windows Snip

You capture any of the opened windows on the screen.