Take Screenshots the easy Way

If you have Home Premium Edition or above you may like to know about a lesser known feature called "Snipping Tool".  This feature is part of the feature set for Tablet PCs but you do not need a tablet PC to use it.

In short, Snipping Tool will enable you create and save screenshots very easily.  Do a search for SNIP on your machine and it should be there top of the list of your programs.  When you launch the tool for the first time it will offer to place a handy shortcut in your quicklaunch toolbar.

Once launched you are presented with the following dialogue box:

As the shot shows, simply drag your cursor over the area you want to capture.  When dragged, you get a new window where you can save the screenshot, email it, add text with highlighting and a few other things.

This may only be a very short guide but I hope more people become aware of this extremely useful tool.

Happy Snipping :)

Update:  Just as an after-thought, I might as well also mention the new Sticky Notes.  This is also available in Home premium or above. 

It allows you to create post-it notes as reminders.  Unfortunately due to it being a tablet PC feature, it does not recognise keyboard entry, only mouse or pen pointer as you can see from the shot below.  But in addition to writing notes, you can actually record a voice note and have it attached to the sticky note.