A Look Back: PowerToys for Windows XP (Premium)

With this week’s news that Microsoft is rebooting PowerToys, I thought it would be fun to take a trip back in time. So, here’s a look at some public and private information about the last PowerToys release, which occurred alongside Windows XP in 2001.

Microsoft revealed to Windows XP beta testers in August 2001 that it was rebooting the PowerToys.

“As most of you probably know, PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after the product is code-complete,” a message to beta testers notes. “These toys add fun and functionality to the Windows experience. We’ve taken great care to ensure that PowerToys operate as they should. But please note that these programs are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys.”

In the initial release, Microsoft offered the following PowerToys for Windows XP:

Faster User Switcher. With Fast User Switching enabled on Windows XP, this PowerToy allows you to switch users without having to use the login screen.

Shell Player. This PowerToy plays MP3 files and WMA files from the taskbar.

Task Switcher. Replaces the existing Alt + Tab application switching mechanism of Windows XP. It provides a thumbnail preview of windows in the task list and is compliant with the new Windows XP visual style.

IE Find Toolbar. This PowerToy makes Internet Explorer’s find dialog accessible as a toolbar. This allows searches on the current page without a floating dialog.

Open Command Window Here. This PowerToy adds an “Open Command Window Here” context menu option on file system folders. This gives users a quick way to open a command window (cmd.exe) pointing at a selected folder in the Explorer UI.

Tweak UI. Provides UI for system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default UI.

PowerToy Calc. Graphing calculator.

Bulk Resize for Photos. Allows you to make a new, resized copy of your selected pictures in the same folder they are currently located in. You can opt to resize one or many pictures (as a batch).

Over time, more were added, including a ClearType Tuner and updated HTML Slide Show Wizard that debuted in 2004. But the key takeaway is that much of this functionality was added to Windows over time. Humorously, the graphing calculator functionality is just now coming to Windows 10.

I reviewed the PowerToys for Windows XP on the SuperSite for Windows in August 2001. But here’s a more recent review that I wrote for Connected Home Magazine that appeared in May 2002. I don’t believe this is available anywhere else anymore.

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Windows XP PowerToys

After a four-month absence, Microsoft’s free PowerToys for Windows XP have returned, albeit in slightly changed form from their original release in October 2001. The PowerToys are a collection of 10 power-user oriented tools for Windows XP, many of which offer intriguing digital media functionality that’s missing from the default XP install. In this review, I’ll take a look at the Toys and make recommendations about which ones you might consider.

Alt-Tab Replacement

Windows has always been keyboard navigation-friendly, dating back to its early days as a DOS shell. And today, power users are familiar with many time-saving key combinations, such as ALT+F4 to exit the current application and CTRL+F4 to close the current document in the current application. But the most famous Windows key combination is probably ALT+TAB, which lets you switch between the currently running applications and other open windows.

If you’re running Microsoft Word and Outlook, for example, and Word is the current application, then hitting ALT+TAB quickly will cause Outlook to jump to the front. Likewise, if you hit ALT+TAB but don’t release the ALT key, you can view a small window that features an icon for each running application or open window: Each subsequent tap on the TAB key moves the selection forward to the next application or window, and when you find the one you want, just release the ALT key.

The Alt-Tab Replacement Toy enhances this effect with a blue, XP-style window that not only shows an icon for each application or window, but also shows a thumbnail of each application or window as they are highlighted. That way, you can use a visual representation of the windows and applications to more easily select what you want. The problem with this Toy, however, is speed: Even on a fast Pentium 4 system with a 64 MB 3D accelerator, Alt-Tab Replacement is far too slow for all but the most casual of users.

CD Slide Show Generator

One of the nice things you can do with XP is copy hundreds of megabytes of digital photographs and other images to a CD-R and then share them with your friends and family or archive them for later use. But what happens if your friends and family don’t have XP, since support for digital images files varies so wildly from Windows version to Windows version? Well, with this nifty little Toy, your worries are over. When you copy image files to a CD-R using XP’s built-in CD burning capabilities, a little dialog will appear asking whether you’d like to add a small slideshow application to the disk that will auto-run when it is inserted in a PC. And the slideshow works in all modern Windows versions, Windows 95 or newer.

HTML Slide Show Wizard

This is an amazing and fun Toy that takes a directory full of images and creates a full-featured, Web-based slideshow that can optionally offer other viewing options, including a thumbnail view of all the images and a Filmstrip-style view that’s similar to the My Computer Filmstrip view style in XP. The Wizard even creates intelligent HTML that degraded appropriately for non-IE browsers, so that your slideshows are at least viewable on any platform. If you spend a lot of time creating a photo-filled personal Web site, this is one Toy you’ll want to play with.

Image Resizer

A handy shell-oriented tool, Image Resizer adds a context menu entry that lets you quickly and easily resize digital photos and other images so that you can share them via email or the Web and not sop up your friends and family’s bandwidth in the process. Once installed, you simple navigate with My Computer to a folder with images, right-click one or more of them, and select Resize Images. A small window appears, allowing you to select various sizes (small, medium, large, and handheld), and whether the resized images should replace the originals. It even gives the new images logical names so that an image named my_pic.jpg, resized to small size, is renamed as my_pic (small).jpg. Good stuff.

Open Command Window Here

The first PowerToys collection shipped way back in 1995 for Windows 95, and a favorite from the early days—now called Open Command Windows Here—has been enhanced and improved over the years so that it works with more modern OSes.

The XP version is the best yet. What it does is allow you to navigate through the XP file system using My Computer, and then right-click a folder and select “Open Command Window Here” to display an MS-DOS-style command line window that’s been auto-navigated to that location. This is handy because, by default, command line windows open in C:\Documents and Settings\[you user name] by default, and it’s often difficult to type long path names in the window to get where you want. Using this tool, you can get there quite easily. If you’re a command line junky, you need this Toy.

Power Calculator

Essentially a software-based graphing calculator, this Toy will be highly valuable for many high school and college students.

TweakUI

The ultimate PowerToy, TweakUI is also a hold-over from the first, Windows 95-based, PowerToy collection, though it’s been significantly enhanced to offer much XP-specific functionality. TweakUI lets you access numerous system settings that aren’t otherwise available through the stock XP user interface so, for example, you can set your system up to log you in automatically, change the location of special system folders such as Favorites, My Documents, and My Music, or configure how taskbar grouping works. The sheer number of settings you can customize is hard to fathom until you see it, but TweakUI is a must-have tool for all Windows XP users. Highly recommended.

Taskbar Magnifier

Similar to the accessibility-based Magnifier tool that ships in XP, this Toy lets you magnify a portion of the screen, but it uses a taskbar-based location to display the magnification. Frankly, the standard Magnifier tool is more appropriate for vision-impaired users, and I’m not sure why anyone would want, or need, this Toy.

Virtual Desktop Manager

Few people realize it, but Windows NT-based OSes have had the ability to work with multiple desktops for years, though Microsoft has never seen fit to make this capability part of the base operating system for some reason. In previous NT versions, virtual desktops could be configured through a tool in the NT Resource Kit, but now such a tool is available in the XP PowerToys as well. Dubbed the Virtual Desktop Manager, this Toy provides you with four virtual desktops, each of which can have its own applications and other windows open. The desktop icons and Start menu, however, are identical on each desktop. You switch between desktops using a small UI in the taskbar.

Personally, I’ve never seen the need for virtual desktops, but power users will be all over this capability, I bet.

Webcam Timershot

One of the most common uses of Web cameras (Web cams) these days is to use them to automatically upload snapshots to a specific location so that they can be displayed on a Web site. Then, users visiting the site can see semi-live images that are routinely updated, every few minutes or so. XP supports many Web cams out of the box, but it doesn’t offer this type of automatic uploading capability. So this need is addressed with Webcam Timershot, a neat little application with numerous configuration options for determining the quality of the snapshots, the frequency of uploading, and the location to which the images will be posted. You can configure it to constantly overwrite the existing image or archive images as they’re uploaded. If you’re an XP-based Web cam user, this is a must-have.

Wrapping up

One thing that’s changed with the new PowerToys is that they are no longer available as a single download. Instead, you download only the Toys you want and install them individually, which can be a bit of a pain. Also, many of the Toys that Microsoft had planned for this collection are no longer included, such as a nice taskbar-based media player, an IE Find toolbar, and a Super-fast User Switcher. But the collection is solid, and definitely worth looking at. See the URLs below for more information and the free downloads.

Resources

PowerToys for Windows XP

Windows XP PowerToys Reviewed