Windows 7: bring back old Alt+Tab behavior, turn off Aero Peek
Posted by mikeg on December 4, 2009
There are a lot of things I like about Window 7, but the new Aero Peek enhancement to Alt+Tab made this shortcut a lot less productive.
You can read the background here and even watch a video here, but essentially it comes down to the following: As you Alt+Tab, if you pause on any of the items, Alt+Tab switcher window hides and now you are seeing Aero Peek preview of selected window. Along with a number of people I found this confusing – while Alt+Tab was a straight forward and productive experience on XP, on Windows 7 I was having major issues finding the window I wanted on the first try
The easiest way to deal with this is to disable Aero Peek:
1) Go to System Properties (right click "Computer" in an explorer window and choose properties)
2) Click "Advanced System Settings" in the left panel
3) You should be on the Advanced Tab, in the performance section, click "Settings…"
4) Uncheck "Enable Aero Peek"
5) While here consider what other items you can live without – every item you uncheck will lead to better performance. Consider choosing "adjust for best performance" if running on netbook or slower pc – that will remove all the fanciness.
This page goes into detail about options that you should consider unchecking
