Windows 7: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?

Windows 7 has again revealed its Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde syndrome: namely, the fortuitous discovery of a useful feature leading to yet another intractable problem.

First, let's tackle the useful feature that is almost artfully concealed from users. Quite by accident, I found that there is more information available to users from the Control Panel than would appear at first blush. To see what I mean, try the following steps:

• Click on the "Start" orb
• Click "Control Panel" menu item
• Do not click on any of the icons that appear in the window below. Instead, click directly on the the right arrow immediately following the words "Control Panel" in the field near the top of the page
  
• In the resulting menu, select the first menu entry: "All Control Panel Items"

The resulting window unveils a treasure trove of features. Many are directly available in the original Control Panel window, but some are not.

Of particular interest to me is the link "Performance Information and Tools." Clicking this link will open a window showing a Windows Experience Index for each of five categories. Below the main area is a link entitled "What do these numbers mean?" Read up on the index if you like, but that is not what is important.

Of greater value is an unobtrusive link to the right that reads "View and print detailed performance and system information." Clicking on that link displays expanded information about your computer system, including (but not limited to) processor speed, total memory, storage capacity of all attached hard drives, graphics memory and processing speed, and network adapters.

My teen-age son needs this information when he goes shopping for computer games to determine if his machine has the capacity for the particular computer game he intends to buy. Why Microsoft buries this system information so deeply is an irritating mystery.

But that is not the worst of it. We are now ready to address the intractable problem I mentioned at the start of this diatribe. At the top and bottom of the expanded system information window is a button that reads "Print this page." As you would expect, clicking on either of these links will open another window that lists all available printers. If you happen to be mobile with a laptop that is not connected to any printer, that window is not very helpful. You can, of course, select the option "Print to file," in which case your results will be saved to a .prn file that is illegible to anything other than printer software and is therefore equally useless.

In researching how to handle this .prn file, I stumbled across one nifty solution that involves an entirely different approach. This method entails downloading and installing two free software programs:

• CutePDF Writer and...
• Ghostscript, an interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF.

CutePDF Writer installs itself as a pseudo printer in the Windows control panel's "Printers and Faxes" window (XP) or "Devices and Printers" window (Win7). Simply go through the drill of printing a file, making sure to choose the "CutePDF Writer" printer icon in the "Print" window. After you click the "Print" button, a "Save as" window will then appear with .pdf as the only file type permitted. Drill down to the desired folder, assign a meaningful file name, and click the "Save" button. Mission accomplished.

In this manner, CutePDF Writer and its silent partner Ghostwriter allow any application with a print button or print menu to save a file in .pdf format. Both programs are very easy to install and even easier to use, and they seem to work perfectly together.

Using these two marvelous programs, I was able to save the information from my computer's detailed performance and system information discussed above. Whereas I had been totally thwarted by Microsoft's lame "Print this page" button, I now have the data in a single .pdf file as a permanent electronic reference that is eminently readable and easily transferable to another computer for eventual printing. Sweet!

Maybe I should I instead say "Suite!"