One of my favorite Windows 7 amenities is thumbnail previews, which appear when you mouse over any running program in the taskbar.

In fact, each thumbnail has a little red X in the upper-right corner, meaning you can close that program without first having to maximize it.

As a longtime fan of Windows Media Center, I was excited to see what new features the Windows 7 version would bring to the table.

For example, the TV channel guide now includes an Internet TV section where you can stream clips and full episodes of popular CBS shows. It's a nifty addition--but I don't want it cluttering up my guide. (Call me old-fashioned.)

Forget pasting analog sticky-notes to the sides of your monitor. They look terrible there, and they always fall off anyway. Instead, paste digital stickies to your Windows desktop. If you're a Windows 7 user, it's a snap: Just run the new Sticky Notes app.

You might recognize it from the ol' Vista Sidebar. In Windows 7, Microsoft ditched the Sidebar but kept the gadgets, allowing the latter to reside anywhere on your desktop.

Much as I'm pleased to see Windows Explorer finally getting a prominent spot on the taskbar in Windows 7, I'm a little disappointed that it opens to the Libraries folders by default. That's rarely the area I'm after when I open Explorer.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to tweak it so that it opens to whatever folder I want. Here's how:

Most users know how to copy text. Select the text with your mouse, then click Edit, Copy--or, better yet, press Ctrl-C on your keyboard. Easy right?

Well, it's about to get a little easier. AutoCopy is a Firefox add-on that automatically copies any selected text straight to the Clipboard. (You then paste it like you normally would.)

I spent the better part of yesterday trying to resolve a problem with my iPhone: After migrating iTunes to Windows 7, it wouldn't sync properly.

Specifically, iTunes would conk out about three-quarters of the way into backing up the iPhone. I literally waited hours, hoping it would eventually finish the process, but no luck.

A free Gmail account entitles you to a little over 7GB of free storage. A free Google PicasaWeb account nets you a mere 1GB. If you're sending a lot of mail and/or uploading a lot of photos, you're likely to run out of space in a hurry.

You could always buy extra storage, but it wasn't exactly cheap. Well, now it is: Google just cut storage prices in a big way. Take a look at the options:

Still with me on the slow migration to Windows 7? If so, it's time to start wrapping up the process, by which I mean installing any programs that didn't get installed by Ninite, copying over your data files and folder, and setting up peripherals like printers.

In other words, the time has come to start living under Windows 7's roof, returning to XP or Vista only when necessary. Before you turn off the lights and lock the door, however, make a list of the programs you still need to install and the data you need to copy.

In Part 5 of my series on how to migrate to Windows 7 a little bit at a time, you learned a simple way to sync your Firefox and/or Internet Explorer bookmarks.

Today, let's take an even bigger step: copying your iTunes library. This is literally a drag-and-drop procedure, though it may take a little time.

It's an age-old question: When you're done using your laptop, or just taking a break from work, should you put it to sleep, let it hibernate, or turn it all the way off?

Allow me to answer by way of a mnemonic: hibernate is great. You see, sleep mode (a.k.a. standby) puts your system into an off-like state, allowing you to pick up where you left off after just a few seconds (unlike rebooting, which can take minutes). But a PC in standby mode continues to consume battery power, so it's not uncommon to return to a "sleeping" PC to find that it's just plain dead.

Today I saw something that made my eyes go wide: A friend reached for the mouse, clicked the Start button, and then went back to the keyboard to type the name of the app he wanted to launch.

I asked him what I considered an obvious question: "Why didn't you just press the Windows key?"

Warning! Warning! (Sorry, just watched a "Lost in Space" marathon. Picture my arms flailing wildly.) YouTube may be home to countless cutesy cats playing the piano, but the video-streaming service definitely has its seedy side.

Specifically, YouTube doesn't filter user comments, and some of them are downright atrocious. I've seen hate speech, profanity, and ridiculously excessive punctuation. Okay, that last one's merely annoying, but the fact remains that YouTube can expose your kids to decidedly inappropriate language.