Tweak3D.Net - Windows XP Introduction

Windows XP Introduction

Written by Sine
Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Article Index
Windows XP Introduction
More Control Panel
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Page 3 of 3

Zip Files

Usually the first thing I do when I install Windows is to install an unzipper to extract all of my backed-up files, but this is a thing of the past. Windows XP has built-in support for zip files, and they now show up as folders with a different icon. You can’t run a program from inside a zip file, though, so they still need to be extracted before you can do anything useful with them.

I find that other utilities offer more compression and manipulation options, such as WinZip or WinRar, so you may want to install your own preferred program. Many people will find the built-in support to be sufficient, however, so you should find out for yourself.

CD Writing

One of the more interesting new capabilities of Windows XP is its completely integrated data and audio CD writing. This allows you to write any file to CD, and will even decode WMA/MP3 files and burn them as audio tracks.

The support is slightly cumbersome, however, since the files for a data CD are automatically rolled into an image before they’re burned. This is a step that no other CD-writing program takes, and takes extra time. It’s still convenient, but your CD writer probably came with another program that you can use if you want to. Other CD-writing programs will work fine in Windows XP.

This is another feature that you may or may not use, depending on your preferences and your emotional bond to your utility of choice.

Tray Icon Hiding

This is something that I didn’t know XP even did until it suddenly started doing it – Windows will hide inactive system tray icons! This is very cool for those pesky programs that insist on adding system tray icons that you can’t get rid of.

Windows will only start doing this after it knows an icon is inactive, though, and sometimes it guesses wrong. I would suggest using Windows normally for about a week, and then you should start modifying its settings. Right-click on the task bar, click Properties, and click “Customize…” at the bottom and then start tweaking.

Sometimes you just don’t want to hide an icon, such as your soundcard’s volume control, so I’d suggest setting those kinds of things to “Always Show.” Other tray icons are almost never useful, such as antivirus programs and other utilities, so you can set those to “Always Hide”.

The arrow indicates hidden icons

When an icon is “hidden”, it doesn’t disappear completely. Instead, you’ll have a small arrow at the left edge of your system tray, which will restore all of your tray icons. Clicking it again will hide the hidden icons again, giving you a smaller tray.

Some Real Tweaking

For more system-level tweaks, you will have to use a third-party utility. This has been true for other versions of Windows, so it's no surprise - Microsoft doesn't include hard-core tweaks in the Control Panel, unfortunately. One that I've tried is Tweak-XP, available here from Electic.

It lets you adjust your cache settings, tweak your Internet connection, and play with some of the visual settings I've mentioned (and it even lets you make your task bar translucent!). I'm sure there will be a ton of Windows XP tweaking programs once XP gains popularity, but this one is already pretty good.

In Conclusion

I hope this guide helps new and old users of Windows alike to use Windows XP’s various features better. XP is definitely the most feature-filled and advanced OS from Microsoft to date, and some people may feel lost.

Microsoft has a very wide list of how-to articles which you can access at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/default.asp.

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