- Image via Wikipedia
One of the first things you should do when you get a new computer is to make some adjustments to the default settings. Defaults are designed to be user-friendly, but they’re very generic; for your computer to serve you best, you need to aim the settings to your specific needs. For example, if you have trouble reading smaller fonts you can adjust Windows 7′s settings to display all text in a larger size. You can also increase the sizes of your icons, thumbnails and even the little close, resize and minimize buttons at the upper right of every window.
Once things are the right size, it’s time to pretty them up with some color. Though Windows 7 is fairly new, there’s a lot of support for its vast capacity for customization, and thanks to that there are already hundreds of themes available to change the face of your computer. Pick your favorite color and tint all of your menus, menu bars and fonts. Select a wallpaper to match and download a set of new desktop icons that compliment it. The finishing touch for your theme is a fun screensaver; there are thousands available for free download online, and they can be as simple as a floating marquee of text or as fancy as a computer generated fish aquarium, complete with a custom selection of tropical fish.
If changing the theme and font settings on your computer isn’t enough, try downloading one or more of the thousands of desktop widgets available to bring photo slideshows, current news reports, five-day weather forecasts, instant currency conversion rate calculators and more to you without ever opening an Internet window. You can set the widgets to be specific to you, too; for example, the weather widget can be set to load your local area’s forecast automatically when you open it.
Things like this help your computer seem to “know” you and that makes your user experience more comfortable.
