Customise your Windows Desktop

In Vista and Windows 7, right-click on the Desktop and choose Personalize and click the Change Desktop icons link in the left-hand panel. The resulting dialogue box has a few more choices but otherwise works the same as in Windows XP.

If you have gone a bit icon crazy and have a Desktop full of them, it’s easy to sort things out. In XP, right-click the Desktop and choose Arrange Icons By. Sort them by name or type, or align them into a notional grid that makes everything look neater.

In Windows 7 and Vista, right-click and choose either Sort By or View to achieve the same results. In Windows 7 or Vista you can also use the View menu to change the size of your Desktop icons.

Text size and style
Incidentally, if you find that Windows’ default text size is hard to read why not change it?

In XP, right-click on the Desktop and choose Properties. When the dialogue box appears, click the Appearance tab. From here, use the dropdown Font size menu to adjust the text from normal to large to extra large. This will affect fonts used to label icons on the Desktop or the title bar of opened windows or applications.

In Vista, right-click on the Desktop and choose Personalize. When the window opens, click the Adjust font size command in the Tasks pane on the left. Click Continue if Vista asks for permission and increase the text size to Lager scale. You will have to restart the PC to see the effect.

Windows 7 users, meanwhile, should right-click the Desktop and choose Personalize. When the window opens, click Display in the Tasks pane on the left and select Medium or Larger to change the size of the text. Again, you will have to restart to see the changes.

Customising the Taskbar
Usually the Taskbar is always visible but it does not have to be. In Windows 7, Vista or XP right-click on the Taskbar and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. When the dialogue box opens tick Auto-hide the Taskbar and click OK. Now it will disappear until the mouse pointer rolls to the bottom of the screen. Then it will slide back into view.

Incidentally, the Taskbar does not have to be at the bottom of the screen. Right-click the it and make sure Lock the Taskbar has not got a tick next to it. If it has, click to remove it. Now left-click on a blank part of the Taskbar and, while holding down the mouse button, drag it up to any side of the screen. This works with all versions of Windows.

To explore more personalisation options, right-click on any blank part of the Desktop and choose Properties (XP) or Personalize (Vista/7). It’s possible to alter window colours, font styles, sounds and screensavers. And for help finding new Desktop wallpaper images, see the mini-Workshop below.

How to download more Windows wallpapers
1 Vistawallpapers.com has thousands of free Desktop backgrounds that work with Windows 7, Vista and 7. Find a good one and click on it.

2 A larger version appears in the middle of the screen. Hover the mouse pointer over it and, if it turns into a magnifying glass, click it once to zoom in (to get the best quality). Now right-click and choose Set as Background.

3 Switch back to the Desktop. If the background does not look quite right, right-click on it and choose Properties, click the Desktop tab and try one of the settings in the Position dropdown menu.

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