Tip: You can, if you wish, ask Windows not to display a list of the programs you’ve used most recently. You might want to do that if, for example, it would be best that your boss or your spouse didn’t know what you’ve been up to. If that’s your situation, then right-click the Start button; from the shortcut menu, choose Properties. In the resulting dialog box, turn off “Store and display recently opened programs in the Start menu.” (While you’re here, if you’re especially paranoid, you can also turn off “Store and display recently opened items in the Start menu and the taskbar”—a reference to the jump lists feature described on page 51.) Click OK. When you next inspect the Start menu, you’ll be happy to see that the lower-left quadrant, where the recently used programs are usually listed, is creepily blank.
If you see a submenu arrow (˘) next to a program’s name in the Start menu, congrats. You’ve just found a jump list, a new Windows 7 feature that gives you quick access to documents you’ve opened recently. See page 51 for details on creating, deleting, and working with jump lists. At the very bottom is the All Programs list described below, plus the all-important Search box, which gets a whole chapter to itself (Chapter 3). •• Right side (dark). In general, the right side of the Start menu is devoted to listing important places on the computer: folders like Documents, Pictures, and Music; or special windows like Network, Control Panel, and Computer. At the bottom is the Shut Down button, which turns the PC off. The ˘ button next to it offers several variations of “off,” like “Log off,” Lock (for when you’re about to wander away for coffee, so that a password is required to re-enter), Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate. Tip: After many years, the “My” prefix finally disappeared from all the important folders of your PC in Windows Vista (My Pictures, My Music, My Documents, My Computer, and so on). Maybe Microsoft was tired of all the lawsuits from Fisher-Price. In Windows 7, “My” may be gone from the libraries containing those file types. But within your own Personal folder, there they are again: My Pictures, My Music...! Page 143 explains why, but in the meantime, you’re not stuck with “My.” You can rename these special icons just as you would any other icon (page 145). Call it “My Computer,” call it “Your Computer,” call it “Jar Jar Binks”—makes no difference to Windows.
Keyboard Navigation You can navigate and control the Start menu in either of two ways: Use the arrow keys Once the Start menu is open, you can use the arrow keys to “walk” up and down the menu. For example, press , to enter the left-hand column from the bottom. Or press > to enter the right-hand column. Either way, once you’ve highlighted something in either column, you can press the < or > keys to hop to the opposite side of the menu; press the , or . keys to highlight