Preme For Windows 7 is a neat window management utility that almost works

Preme For Windows 7 is a neat window management utility that almost works

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity

Preme For Windows 7 is a utility that tries to let you manage your windows more easily. I can tell you one thing about its developers, though: they use a completely stock Windows 7 installation, with the taskbar in the default location and just one monitor.

I'm quite sure of this, because many of the functions utterly (and sometimes comically) failed when faced with my setup; I use dual monitors, and the taskbar is placed vertically on the secondary monitor. Here's a quick rundown of what the functions do, and whether or not they worked. I'm going to list them clockwise according to the image above, starting with Window Switcher Corner:

• Windows Switcher Corner: This is supposed to activate Alt-Tab or Aero Flip 3D when you hit a hotspot on the top-left side of the monitor. It was an utter fail. I hit the spot again and again, but nothing happened. It kind of reminded me of ... never mind, moving on.
  
• Touch Slide Window: This is the one that comically failed. The idea is neat. You single-click the area right under the minimize/maximize/close buttons, and it slides the window outside of the screen. All that remains is a thin bar (the border of the window), and when you hover over it, the window slides back into view. That sounds neat, right? Well, it "hid" stuff by moving it off of my primary monitor and onto my secondary one. It placed it under my taskbar, no less. It was really, really lame but also kind of funny.

• Hold to be on Top: Is it me, or is this name kind of suggestive? Anyway, this feature actually worked. You just left-click and hold over the caption of a window, and the window flickers out and comes back on; now, it's always-on-top. Neat! To toggle, just click again. One thing that's kind of confusing is that the window flickers twice, so it feels like you were pressing too long. That's the way it works, though.
  
• Wheel Window down: This one is so good, it should actually be included with Windows by default. Just place the mouse over a window's title bar and scroll down. The window will minimize. It's really quite elegant.
  
• Press Wheel to close: Again, this should be included with Windows. Simply middle-click the title bar of any window, and that window will close, just like a browser tab does.
  
• Touch Start: This saves you clicking the start button, but you still have to move your mouse over to it. It's a super-useless feature that didn't even work with my setup.
  
• Cursor UP: Is that UP in capital letters because they're fans of the movie? Capitalization seems rather haphazard all over the interface. This specific feature is supposed to move the cursor to the "Close Window" option when you right-click a taskbar icon, and of course, it didn't work with my taskbar.
  
• ESC ESC: Hitting Escape twice in a row closes the current window. That's semi-useful, but it's dangerous, too.

Bottom line: Like many other applications, this thing does itself (and its users) a disservice by trying to do too much. If they just kept it down to the three window-title functions, this would be one wonderful utility with a permanent spot on my system. It's really too bad.

Preme For Windows 7 is a neat window management utility that almost works originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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