 You think you know everything about Windows? Uh, yeah. Well think again, maggot! We got tips, pot tips, tech tips, 10 tips for all you Windows power users out there. And we're not telling you a thing until we tell you. MSI sponsored this video, and we're gonna be going through our tips on their Summit E13 Flip Evo, their first laptop with WiFi 6E and up to 20 hours of battery life, and their Crosshair 15 with up to 11th gen Intel Core i7 processors and RTX 3060 GPUs. (*upbeat music*) Everyone knows at least one or two keyboard shortcuts that they use all the time. But whenever you're watching someone else use Windows, there's a good chance that they'll use one that you don't. This resource, which we'll have linked down below, lists every Windows shortcut, but we've got some favorites. Windows Print Screen saves directly to your screenshots folder. Windows E opens up File Explorer. Windows I opens the Settings app. Why they went with I, we'll never know, but it's handy. And Windows Tab opens up Task View, just to name a few. Did you know that instead of Ctrl-Alt-Delete, you can press Ctrl-Shift-Escape to directly open Task Manager without taking a detour to the lock screen? And did you know that you can create new virtual desktops with Windows Ctrl-D, and then swap between these desktops with Windows Ctrl and the arrow keys? Ah, that's actually tip number two. Whether you lost your second monitor in that last round of budget cuts, or you just plain love min-maxing your productivity, multiple desktops are a game changer. In less than a second, I can go from researching and writing up a report to collaborating with my colleagues to touching up some photos for the company website. That beanie's looking good, Chase, lttstore.com. And of course, those who work hard usually play hard. Am I right? So the second your lunch break starts, or any other break, bam, you are instantly playing your favorite game, catching up on Reddit, and chatting it up in your favorite Discord server. Note that the more applications you wanna keep open at a time though, the more system memory you'll need. So for heavier users, I'd recommend the version of the E13 Flip Evo with 32 gigs of LPDDR4X memory. Now let's customize our desktop. Whether you like multiple desktops or just one, I'm sure we can all agree that it should look its best. Now decades ago, the in thing was custom pointers and different sound themes for your Windows Alerts. And guess what? It's totally still a thing. Your pointer can change size, color, and shape to just about anything, and Windows Alerts can be swapped on a per type basis. So you will never again be confused about whether a USB device was plugged in or removed. Hello Linus, you are quite good at plugging me in. Another handy feature for the minimalist out there is the ability to hide desktop icons and the taskbar for that ultra clean look or to save your OLED display from unsightly burn-in. For those of you wanting an even more custom experience, check out Rainmeter. It's a third party app that adds custom widgets like weather, clocks, or usage meters, all in whatever style you can find. One that matches the gaming aesthetics and RGB of the Crosshair 15, or something more muted if you prefer. You can even make one yourself. Speaking of making it yourself, we made our own screwdriver, and once it's ready, we're gonna have a full video on the process. Get subscribed so you don't miss it. If you wanna customize a bit more, but you prefer to stay within the Microsoft product suite, there are some really cool add-ons in Power Toys and Microsoft Garage. A lot of the functionality of Fancy Zones, which is one of my personal favorites, is built into Windows 11 now, but it still offers an outstanding degree of control over the snapping functionality and appearance of your windows. Awake is helpful if you wanna keep your power and sleep settings, but put them on pause for a little while, say to ensure that a render completes overnight. And Keyboard Manager lets you make your own keyboard shortcuts and remap keys. Power Rename is handy for renaming files in bulk, and there are a few others with more in the works. So be sure to check it out and choose the right power toy for you. Another handy tool, particularly for those of you working from home with multiple computers, is Mouse Without Borders, which is available through Microsoft Garage. With it, you can use the same mouse and keyboard for up to four computers over your network, and even copy text and drag and drop files between them. Now that our desktop is ready, let's talk pins. I can't count how many taskbars I've seen that are still using whatever stock pins Windows comes with, even ones they couldn't possibly use. This is prime real estate guys for one-click shortcuts to whatever apps you use frequently. Chrome, Discord, Steam, Excel, anything you're pretty much guaranteed to open after restarting your PC should be pinned. And don't feel limited to just left clicking on those pins. Many applications have shortcuts in the context menu so that you can right click and launch Steam Big Picture or Steam VR directly, going from asleep to gaming in seconds. You can open recent Word documents, change your status on Microsoft Teams, the works. Pinning is also super handy in File Explorer. Quick access at the top will keep your recent files and folders ready for you, but for privacy reasons, I prefer to disable this automatic behavior and create my own pins. It's particularly useful if you have a lot of different server paths that you might have trouble remembering. Go there once, pin the folder and never search for it again. Also check this out. You can move them around to your heart's content with a simple drag and drop. But Linus, you might say, I don't want all those icons cluttering up my pristine taskbar. Can I just search for them? Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. The good news is yes, the Windows 11 search function is both accurate and responsive. I mean, yes, this is a fast machine with a high-performance SSD, but still, finally, PC users are getting a taste of what Mac folks have been enjoying for over 15 years with Spotlight. The bad news is that if you're not on Windows 11, it's still terrible. It does work for many installed apps, so you can at least stay clutter-free by searching for every app you wanna open, but I've seen all kinds of undesirable behavior. I mean, look at this. I searched for explorer. Seems like an appropriate keyword to bring up file explorer, and it pulls up Microsoft Edge. Thanks, Windows. Guess I'll use my hotkey next time. It's also pretty bad for anything file-specific, offering useless web results, even when you've already downloaded the file and it's sitting in your local drive. So be gone to the depths of hell, Windows 10 search. Glory to Windows 11 search, our new savior. Tip number seven, your mouse has three buttons. Well, often more these days, actually, but who's keeping track? These tips are for the main three. Let's start with the forgotten button that no one pays proper attention to. I mean, yes, we all know that the middle wheel can scroll up and down, but it's also got a click, which is handy for opening and closing tabs in third-party applications like Chrome and Firefox. Ooh, and here's one of my personal favorites. Left-clicking file explorer, if you already have a window open, just minimizes and maximizes it over and over again. Terrible. But middle-click and bam! As many new instances of file explorer as you could ever need. Now, most of you probably use right-click all the time, but did you know that you can right-click and drag to open up a context menu in file explorer? Take your zipped file, for example, right-click on it, hold that, drag it over here, and extract directly to where you've dragged to, saving valuable fractions of a second. As for our trusty left-click, holding shift or alt while you left-click and drag will change how you're highlighting text, which can be particularly useful in Word or other text editors. You can also double-click to highlight a word and triple-click to highlight an entire paragraph if you're in a hurry. Pro tip, by the way, modern trackpads like these ones support these same interactions. One finger is left, two is right, three is middle-click, and if you swipe with all four fingers, you can slide over to a second of your multiple desktops. Now you know. Another area where Apple is killing it and Microsoft is catching up is phone integration. But at least there's progress. These days, you can sync your Android phone to your PC so you can use your favorite mobile apps and even send SMS messages and make calls from your desktop. Making a to-do list in Notepad that you wanna take with you, just transfer it over before you get up and you're good to go. Sort of. Honestly, it's still kind of basic, but at least for those of us who are pretty much tethered to our computers, it's nice to finally be able to come home and put the phone down for the night. Now some folks might leave this out, but there is a lot more to task manager these days than just processes and services, particularly the performance tab. And while there are better tools for monitoring this sort of thing, like hardware info, when you need to quickly check if your memory is running at the right speed or in dual channel mode, or you need a quick and dirty look into your CPU usage and GPU usage, look no further. It's especially useful when you're trying to troubleshoot someone else's PC without being able to remote in, since just about anyone and their dog can figure out how to open up task manager and navigate through its tabs. I mean, good luck trying to get your grandma to install hardware info and parse this. It's even gotten more and more useful over the years with the users tab introduced with Windows XP. Man, that came in handy for me a lot. My mom always used to leave crap open in her instance and my performance would suck, so I'd have to go in and check and I'd see that. Anyway, the services tab showed up in Windows Vista and more recently we got GPU usage including temperatures, meaning that now anyone can diagnose a thermal issue that is slowing down their games. Just whatever you do, make sure you hit the more details button that they added with Windows 8. Grr. Now, I wouldn't really know anything about this, but I can imagine that if I had friends, I might run into a situation where their banking app isn't working, so they need access to my computer. Well, fear not. It is easy to make what's known as a kiosk account for guests that only has access to a web browser. Just set up another account, go to account settings on admin and set up assigned access. If you want to be extra careful, you can also encrypt your own files by right clicking on the file or folder, selecting properties, advanced, encrypt contents to secure data. Your key is tied to your account password though, so this is really only handy for multiple users sharing a single PC. You can always hide files and folders by the way for a little bit of extra stealth, but most people who are gonna be digging around probably already know about show hidden files. On the other hand, if you're forever alone like many of us, this won't be a problem unless your computer gets stolen. Speaking of which, backups. Windows's own integrated backup system isn't the best. Acronis's solution, which we made a sponsored video about recently is absolutely better, but anything is better than what most people do, which is nothing. Windows has an image backup function that should be your foundation. It's just a bit of a pain to find. Look in control panel, system and security, file history, and then click on the small bottom left system image backup link. Click set up backup and follow the instructions, either saving it to an extra drive or elsewhere on your network. The best way to use this is to also have a third air gapped or non-network connected copy of your OS and files on something like an external USB drive. So that way you will basically never have to worry about ransomware or malware again. Another perfect example of somehow progress also makes things worse is Microsoft's compulsive desire to hide useful features that people shouldn't have to go digging around for. For example, the old control panel, like from way back in the Windows Vista days, is still around. It's just hidden under an all control panel options drop down that is really easy to miss. Now, most average users shouldn't need most of the stuff that's in here, but you're a power user. You need admin tools, power options, storage spaces, and device manager. You need them all in one easy to find location. Speaking of stuff the average user wouldn't need, another useful Windows feature is the command prompt, but that's actually not the tip. Did you know that you can change transparency with control shift scroll wheel? It sure makes inputting lines that you're copying from a website easy when you're working with limited screen space. Like on one of these fine MSI laptops. Did I mention MSI sponsored this video? Thanks guys. We'll have affiliate links to them down below. And one last thing about Windows, especially if you're a power user, it can end up getting a little confused. Maybe your USB ports stop working or your PC thinks your camera's in use when it's not. Whatever the case, don't be afraid to just back up your files and run the included reset tool. A clean will fix just about any issue. And unlike the old days, it doesn't require you to reinstall your drivers, re-register your product key or any of that junk. You know what's not junk? This segue to our sponsor MSI. The experience of using Windows is great on a modern high-performance machine like one of these. For productivity, the Summit E13 Flip features unrivaled CPU computing ability and same class laptops. Seriously, up to 28 Watts of power in this puppy. It's the first laptop equipped with Wi-Fi 6E with up to 20 hours of battery life with its 70 watt hour battery. It's quiet under 35 decibels in balance mode to meet World Health Organization noise guidelines. And it supports the MSI pen with support for MPP 2.0 and it can work as a presentation remote. We've also got an MSI USB-C docking station to go with it. And for gaming, the Crosshair 15 can be equipped with up to an 11th gen Core i7 processor and RTX 3060 GPU. It's got a brand new chassis design with a kind of tough titanium gray metal style shell to resemble weaponry. It's got their Cooler Boost 5 dedicated thermal solution with two fans and six heat pipes. And the heat pipes are thinner than ever, allowing it to fit in this nice compact chassis. Want more tech tips? Maybe check out our video on how motherboards work Turbo Nerd Edition. That suggestion alone is another tech tip free of charge.