Ever since I started using Windows 7 as my primary OS, I’ve been finding little random tricks that save time—and this one is truly a stupid geek trick… did you know that middle-clicking the Pidgin icon on the taskbar will show the buddy list?

Of course, it’s not actually written that way, and it just happens to work. So if you have a conversation window open, just middle-click the taskbar button…

And just like that, up pops the Buddy List!

Normally to launch the buddy list, you have to double-click the icon in the system tray, but since Windows 7 opens a new instance of an application when you middle-click the taskbar button, it loads the pidgin.exe executable again, which pops up the buddy list.

It’s a tiny, time-saving tip. Just the way we like it.

Random Links We Found This Week

This was an unbelievably busy week, what with all the… actually I forget why. I can’t believe there’s like 7 months until Lost comes back on TV.

• Shut Down Your Windows PC Remotely From Linux
  All you need to do is run a command from the Linux terminal.
• ConvertIcon!
  This application is great, converts PNG images into ICO files.
• Bing Cleaner for Greasemonkey 
  Microsoft’s new search engine came out last week, and people are already making scripts to make it work more like Google.
• Create a Log to Keep Track of Your Job Search 
  Job search got you down? Keep a log of everything so you’ll know who to call back when.
• Taskbar Overlord Tweaks the Windows 7 Taskbar 
  Lifehacker reader Jay released a great tool that lets you middle-click on taskbar buttons to close the application. Useful!
• Use Caps Lock for Hand-Friendly Text Navigation 
  This is unbelievably geeky. It’s almost nerdy. I love it.
• Gmail Notifier Plus Adds Email Alerts to the Windows 7 Taskbar 
  This little application docks to the Win7 taskbar, adds jump lists and other good stuff. Neat!
• Windows Vista SP2: Readers Report Big Increases in Free Disk Space
  PC World reports that people are seeing loads of extra free space after installing SP2. Yeah, cause it does cleanup. Either way, it’s worth the install: Here’s the 32-bit and 64-bit downloads.
• Opera 10 Beta 
  The latest release has some cool new features, it’s fast, it’s slick, it’s got tab thumbnails!
• Gadget Teardowns 
  This site tells you how to take apart your gadgets. You know, without totally breaking them in the process.
• Windows 7 Versus Mac OS X Leopard: The Feature-by-Feature Showdown 
  Gina writes up her thoughts on Mac vs PC. That’s right, Windows 7 is awesome.

Let’s try something new – if you find something great that you want to share with the rest of the How-To Geek readers, share it on Delicious with the tag “weekingeek” and we’ll take a look at it.

Reviews And Such

We’ve got more reviews for your reading pleasure. In the very future, we’ll be reorganizing the reviews section to make it easier to find stuff—Mysticgeek has done such a great job of putting together reviews that we need to figure out a new way to present them.

Folder Lock 6 The Good: Fast, easy, and customizable Folder Lockers. Allows multiple files and folders in each Locker. Uses 256-bit AES Encryption
Diskeeper 2009 Home Edition The Good: Tons of user options and reports. Automatic defragging. Great for home office or power PC user
Smart Defrag The Good: Light on system resources and provides real-time defragging

The Weekly Articles

In case you missed them, here’s the articles from the week.

• Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: the Abstract Art Edition
• Friday Fun: Take a Break from Spreadsheets and Play Excit!
• Use Conditional Formatting to Find Duplicate Data in Excel 2007
• Quick Tip: How To Open a .DOCX file in Word 2003
• Iron Browser is a Privacy-Conscious Version of Google Chrome
• Easily Backup Data with Karen’s Replicator
• Play Real Media Audio Using VLC
• Edit Microsoft Word 2007 Documents in Print Preview
• Extend Your XP Taskbar Across Multiple Monitors for Free
• Check Weather Conditions in Real-time with Weather Watcher

Editor’s Weekly Random Stuff

This week we saw the first article from our newest writer, Asian Angel, who wrote about Iron Browser. She’s also a big fan of Firefox, and we’re really glad to have her around and writing for us.

We also saw the first wallpaper roundup from our intern Daniel Lyell, who is doing an excellent job putting together some posts and doing research—we’ve got a lot more great stuff in the works!