The new HomeGroup feature makes sharing files and printers between Windows 7 machines very easy.  Today we will take a closer look at this new feature to show how easy the sharing process is.

Setting up your HomeGroup 

There are several ways to access the HomeGroup feature, go to Control Panel and click on “Choose homegroup and sharing options” or just type “homegroup” without quotes into the start menu search bar.

Setup Your Options

You’ll need to decide which settings you want to run when CCleaner is run automatically… for instance, I’d look at whether or not you want to clean out your cookies or recent documents (which is a feature I use often, so I don’t want them cleaned out)

Pre-Scan

When you first start Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware up, this is the window that you will see. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware has a very nice tabbed interface to make shifting between functions smooth and quick. At this point it is set to “Perform quick scan” as the default.

Scanning for Malware

The nice thing about Ad-Aware 2009 is that as soon as you finish installing it, it will automatically check for and download updates.

Once the updating process has finished, you will be asked to restart your computer. After restarting, the following window will display and you can start your scan for malware by clicking on the “Radar Symbol”.

One of the first things you might notice in Windows 7 is the addition of the new Gadgets and Screen Resolution items to the context menu. The only problem is that you might not really want them there—so we’ll explain how to get rid of them.

No clue what we’re talking about? If you are using Windows 7 and you right-click on the desktop, you’ll see a bunch of new items at the bottom:

A source of annoyance for many Windows users is the ” – Shortcut” text that is added to the name of newly created shortcuts, and every time you have to manually edit the shortcut and remove that text. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a registry hack for this?

Most long-time geeks will remember that there was a hack for Windows XP, and probably already know that the same hack works in Windows 7 or Vista as well.

Notice the ” – Shortcut” added to my pidgin icon.

Are you wishing that there was a way to only print the material that you need in a webpage without all the other junk? Now you can do so quickly and easily with Printee for IE.

Installation & Setup

Installation is quick and simple with only four install windows to go through. After you have finished installing Printee for IE, you will need to add the toolbar button to the toolbar.

Right Click on one of your browser’s toolbars, navigate to “Customize”, and select “Add or Remove Commands…”.

Internet Explorer’s “private browsing” mode is an excellent way to hide what you’re looking at from prying eyes, but it’s normally hidden under a menu… but we can make it easier to access.

The Normal Way

To open an InPrivate Browsing window, you can either use the Ctrl+Shift+P shortcut key, or just use the Safety \ InPrivate Browsing item on the menu.

If you’re running XP and skipped the Vista update and need a good way to transfer files and settings, today we take a look at using Windows Easy Transfer and an external USB drive to easily complete the task.

Start Windows Easy Transfer

Start with the new Windows 7 machine and go to Start \ Getting Started \ Transfer your files. 

If you are tired of the way certain keys on your system work, such as the Caps Lock key, you can re-map them to function as a different key by using a registry hack. But there should be an easier way, right?

This is where SharpKeys comes into the picture: It’s a small utility that will let you easily map one key to another key easily, or even turn the key off, without having to enter the registry at all.

For instance, I used the key mapping to just turn off my Caps Lock key, since I never use it.