6th December 2001

How many times have you seen fifteen shortcuts to "My Computer" sitting on someone's desktop? They did a bad, bad thing (although they probably didn't mean to). Even beyond its positive aesthetic impact, I can fully appreciate Microsoft's decision to hide all of the desktop icons (save the Recycle Bin). New users will find themselves relying more and more on their Start Menu (bulky as it may be). Let's say you have a program with which you work frequently. Instead of digging for its shortcut, you could pin it to the new Start Menu. How, you might ask? As long as you're NOT using the Classic Start Menu in Windows XP, you can right-click on a program's shortcut (or the direct executable) and select 'Pin to Start menu' from the list of options. Are you tired of seeing a certain link in there? Right-click on it and select "Remove from This List" to delete the icon. You can always tweak the number of programs to be listed in this section by right-clicking the Start button, selecting Properties, clicking the Customize button, and entering a number (up to 30) in the first field.