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A show of hands, please: Who's deliriously happy with Windows the way it is? Probably not you, if you've found that making it work the way you want takes careful tinkering and the right add-ons. Not the staff here at PC World--we'd change more than a few things if we ran the show. Not even Bill Gates, who's already talking up the Windows we'll get to see two or three years from now. And definitely not the Windows XPatriates who have left the Operating System That Made Redmond Famous for the land of Linux.

In this special report, we cover a multitude of ways to build a better Windows--from Microsoft's next major update to our own wholly imaginary game plan for a new and improved version. We also pit Windows XP against the latest in Linux to reveal the ins and outs of Microsoft-free computing.

Most important, we've assembled a timesaving collection of tips and tools for fine-tuning your current Windows into the OS you'd design--no matter which edition you use, and starting right now.

File and Window Fixes

Explorer is a decent tool, but it's often not good enough. Here are some ways to get what you want faster.

ALL VERSIONS: Open Documents With Your Choice of Applications It's easy to change what application launches when you double-click a particular type of file (see Answer Line for instructions). But for some file types, one application just isn't enough. For example, usually you want to open an HTML file in your Web browser, but sometimes you need to open it in an HTML editor, or make a quick change in a text editor. Fortunately, you can make that choice on the fly. In Windows 2000, Me, and XP: Right-click the document icon and choose Open With or Open With, Choose Program. Select your application from the list. If it's not there, click Browse or Other, navigate to and select the desired application, and click Open. Don't check the Always use this program to open these files check box at the bottom of the Open With dialog box. The application you use will appear on the Open With submenu the next time you right-click a file of that type (see FIGURE 1).

To get the same feature in older versions of Windows (9 x or NT), just download and install OpenExpert from PCWorld.com's Downloads library. It's free for home use, $20 for business and government. To get going, just right-click a file and choose Open With, Add application to specify a program or Open With, Configure OpenExpert to bring up a dialog box with more options and access to a help file.

ALL VERSIONS: Fix File Dialog Boxes Once and for All Windows' File, Open and File, Save As dialog boxes are among the OS's most annoying roadblocks--finding the folder you want can take a lot of digging. File dialog boxes that are small present another hurdle: Though you can resize file dialog boxes to make them easier to work with, they revert to their diminutive default size the next time you open one. If you're willing to shell out a measly $18, a program called XFilesDialog can help. This shareware utility lets you permanently resize file dialog boxes, customize the file list (large icons, small icons, details, and so on), and determine the sort order. Moreover, it puts on the dialog box's title bar pop-up menus that let you access favorite folders, as well as recently used folders and files (see FIGURE 2). It gives you complete control over each feature, and it even works with Microsoft Office 2000 and Office XP. Download a trial version.

ALL VERSIONS: Get Easier Access to Important Folders Wouldn't it be nice if you could make your favorite folder easier to reach from any Explorer folder pane? Reader Gerald Schmidt of Seddiner See, Germany, has a way to make any folder appear under My Computer at the same level as your disk drives for quick access.

Open Notepad or your preferred text editor. Type subst /d z: and press Enter. Then type subst z: %1 and press Enter. The first line removes any virtual disk drive assignments (such as any network drives) from drive letter Z:. The second line maps the Z: drive letter to a folder, as if that folder were a disk drive. Choose File, Save As and store the file in a convenient location. Name the file " mapit.bat" (be sure to include the quotation marks so Notepad doesn't add its default .txt extension), click Save, and close Notepad. In Windows 9 x and Me, you'll need to make another quick tweak to the batch file. Right-click it and choose Properties. Then, on the Program tab, choose Minimized from the Run drop-down list and check Close on exit. Click OK.

In Explorer, choose View, Folder Options or Tools, Folder Options. Click the File Types tab and select the Folder file type. Click Edit or Advanced. In the Edit File Type dialog box, click New to add a new action for folders to your right-click menu. In the Action box, type the wording that will appear on the right-click menu, such as Map Folder as Z: Drive. In the 'Application used to perform action' box, type the path to the batch file, surrounded by quotation marks if any folder in the path uses spaces or long names. (Or use the Browse button to find the path.) At the end, type a space followed by "%1" (including the quotation marks). Your completed application path will look similar to "C:\Program Files\mapit.bat" "%1" (see FIGURE 3). Click OK or Close as many times as necessary to close all dialog boxes.

From now on, any time you want a folder to appear at the drive level, just right-click it and choose Map Folder as Z: Drive. Your existing Z: drive assignment (if any) will change to that folder. The Z: drive is just an alias (not a copy) of your folder, so any changes you make to the contents of the folder will be reflected in the Z: drive and vice versa. Note that the command won't work if you try to use it on a folder that's inside the current Z: drive.

To change or delete this command, return to the Edit File Types dialog box, select the command in the Actions list, and click Edit (Windows 9 x) or Remove. In Windows 2000, Me, and XP, these buttons are disabled, so your only choice is to remove the command by editing the Registry. Start by backing up your Registry in case something goes wrong. (See "Care and Feeding of the Windows Registry" for details.) Choose Start, Run, type regedit, and press Enter. Choose Edit, Find and then type the name of the command you created, such as Map Folder as Z: Drive. The folder containing this text should have the same name but with underscores instead of spaces, as in 'Map_Folder_as_Z:_Drive'. Delete this folder in the tree pane and exit the Registry Editor.

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