Happy Friday the 13th!
Continuing in the vein of maximizing your Windows Vista experience via little-known pointers: Although you've probably already noticed Internet Explorer's Quick Tabs and Preview Pane, you may not be aware that Windows Explorer also has its own Preview Pane that extends beyond the live icons you may have noticed when navigating folders in Windows Explorer. Different than Windows XP's individual menus, toolbars, Navigation Pane and Task Panes, Windows Vista has merged them all into a single interface -- take a look:
The Windows Explorer Preview Pane lets you preview the contents of all media or documents in a file without opening the individual file itself. The Document Explorer, Music Explorer and Picture Explorer all provide an optional Preview Pane.
If a program supports this feature (such as Office 2007), you'll be able to browse views of various docs or a couple of seconds of media content without even opening the file. And you can edit those docs without opening the file! Imagine being able to quickly run through all those PowerPoint presentations you have stored in your Documents folder and determining the exact one you want without opening each file to find out which is which. Talk about boosting your productivity!