Whilst trying to increase my screen brightness I accidentally held down the Windows key instead of the Function key on my Dell laptop.  Much to my surprise, the window I had selected Maximized. Pressing the down error made it restore.  

I played around with it more and came up with these sequences:

Windows key + up:  maximizes a restored window
Windows key + down: restores a maximized window, mimizes a restored window
Windows key + left:  left tiles a restored window, restores a right tiled window, right tiles a left tiled window, ad infinitum
Windows key + right:  right tiles a restored window,  restores a left tiled window, left tiles a right tiled window, ad infinitum

The left and right keys basically loop through all of the options except for maximize and minimize. 

Pretty useful I think!

System Restore may be one of the most underrated features Microsoft ever developed.  While I use it rarely (a good thing in my estimation),  it is a complete lifesaver when I do call upon it.  Sadly, I often forget that just a few years ago,  before the advent of Windows XP, such a thing did not exist. 

System Restore is so effective that it often makes old fashioned troubleshooting a waste of time.  If there is a system checkpoint from last night at midnight when I know the system was performing well, why should I try to track down the exact system file that is corrupt? 

Yesterday I had a few issues with Windows 7 RC.  A late night update for IE8 had somehow compromised my system, corrupting the installation of quite a few applications, including: Google Chrome, Live Mesh, uTorrent, etc. 

I first embarked down the path of reviewing logs.  I found that an update was installed. I then found myself attempting reinstalls of the software that was no longer functioning.  

I was about 10 minutes into this process when it hit me:  System Restore!

Less than ten minutes later my system was completely back to normal.  I’m not sure why the update caused such undesirable behavior, but the good news is that I have the option not to think about if  I prefer. 

I suggest that we each stop a moment and reflect upon how many times System Restore has saved us from endless troubleshooting and allowed us to get back to work.