Book review: Windows 7 Inside Out

Perhaps it’s because I keep finding new things about Windows 7 that I really like… Today’s one was that you can drag the top (or bottom) edge of a window to the edge of a screen and have that window fill the screen vertically, but keeping the left and right edges still (great for when you don’t want it maximised, or docked to the left or right). Another favourite of mine is that you can Shift+Right-click on a file and see “Copy as Path”, which is great when you want to paste the full path into a textbox, or PowerShell, etc. I don’t know if this was available in Vista, but I’ve only noticed it since I’ve been using Windows 7.

…but anyway, perhaps it’s that, but I thought it might be worthwhile to pick up a book about Windows 7. I ordered Windows 7 Inside Out (by Ed Bott), and it arrived this week. It’s not short (about 1000 pages), but I flew through it. I guess because I’m already an experienced Windows user, I skimmed a lot of pages. A lot of the features discussed aren’t new, but Windows is such a large technology that it’s good to look through a good reference book, and with Windows 7 having a lot of new features, it was great to be able to go through this book looking for nuggets that I didn’t know.

And there are plenty of things that I’m just not that interested in. There are sections in this book about IE8, Windows Media Center and Windows Live. It’s not why I picked up the book. They’ll be useful for anyone who borrows the book from me, but I ended up skipping those sections almost completely. I’ll end up going back to them one day maybe. The book comes with an eBook version, which I’ll stick onto my phone and load up when I need it.

Ed Bott (the author who I doubt has a brother that shares my given name) is a journalist, and it shows in his writing. I found it easy to read, and the book is full of tip sections.

So yes, I picked up the tip about dragging the top border from the book. But I found the Copy as Path option myself. Nowadays, I hold Shift down whenever I right-click, just in case there’s an extra option in there I’ll like.