HOW THE SNIPPING TOOL CHANGED MY LIFE

Ever notice that button at the top of your keyboard labeled "Print Screen"? Maybe you've pushed it several times in the hope that a copy of your screen would pop out of your printer only to be disappointed when nothing happened. Possibly, you just decided it was broken and never thought much more about it.

Well, it wasn't broken. What it does when you push it is make a copy of your screen and save it to your clipboard for you to paste into another application. And prior to Windows Vista, it was one of the few stock ways to make a copy of exactly what was on your screen. Of course, if you only wanted to copy a small portion of your screen, you'd have to hit the button, open a picture editor, paste in the copy, and then edit out the parts you didn't want. For someone like myself that tends to take lots of screen shots for demonstration purposes, this process was cumbersome to say the least.

Microsoft made things a lot easier starting with Windows Vista - you're not still using XP are you? The snipping tool allows you to just highlight that portion of your screen you want to copy. It then will even let you make simple edits to what you copied before you print it or save it.

The snipping tool can be found in the accessories folder of the start menu. Now, when your computer is acting up, you can easily make a copy of what you're seeing and let your nerd friends tell you what's wrong.