Minimize!

The little button that makes it happen is in the upper right-hand corner. If you are using Windows 95 or 98, you will see three little buttons in the upper right-hand corner of any window. The two buttons to the left of the X are the magic ones. Let your mouse linger over them and you should see a little popup box describing what each will do. The button on the far left is the minimize button. When you click it, the window will disappear. That has made more than a few new users want to take a hammer to a certain machine sitting on their desk. Once you learn now to find it again, or better yet, where it went in the first place, you will truly be the master of your own fate.

One thing to realize is that you haven't lost a thing. Whatever you were working on is still running. It just isn't taking up any space on your main computer screen (desktop). Look at the bottom of your screen. The entire area from left to right that holds your Start button is called the Taskbar. Any software you have open will appear in the middle of this Taskbar as a button. If you have more than one application open, you will see more than one button. Each will have the name of the program on it. The more items you have open, the skinnier the buttons will be. If you have any windows open on your main screen, the button representing the one on top (the active window) will look different from the others. A single click with the left mouse button on any of these open application buttons will cause its window to immediately appear or disappear. An active window button will disappear. A minimized window will immediately open, ready for you to use. Use these buttons to quickly switch between open applications.

Using your Taskbar this way can be handy for a number of reasons. When a program is minimized, it is still running. The folks who designed Windows didn't give us this feature to make us crazy (they really didn't). They did it so you can actually go between two or more programs conveniently, without having to completely close one thing down before opening another. You can be typing a letter using your word processor, for example, and have a web page and e-mail application (all using different programs) open at the same time. Switching back and forth between them is as easy as single clicking the little buttons on your Taskbar.
It might take a little practice getting used to it, but the convenience is well worth it.

Another thing to remember about minimized programs. These applications are running. This means they are using valuable system resources, and if you have enough of them minimized, your computer could run noticeably slower, sometimes to the point of appearing to be sluggish. Use your Taskbar to close applications you don't need by right clicking the button and choosing Close. Checking out your Taskbar regularly is a great way to make sure you don't have any uninvited guest applications running, or applications you may have forgotten to close. This will insure plenty of resources for the things you do want running.

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