I know, usually you don’t expect me to say much nice about Microsoft. But I use a Windows7 machine because I need it for work, and I’ve actually been favorably impressed with Windows 7. It strikes me as a great leap forward for Windows. It’s generally very usable and the only real complaint I’ve had with it is that forced updates always seem to happen when I have the least time to spare for waiting for them to finish, like a forced restart after a lock-up in the middle of a project on a steep deadline. It’s nearly caught up to the early versions of OSX in the features that I use.

So I was surprised to discover a nice new feature of it today. Well, it’s not new. Obviously it’s always been part of Windows 7. But it was new to me. The file previews will show you the contents of text or code documents, like OSX does in coverflow view. And today I discovered, quite by accident, that the preview’s text is actually selectable so you can copy parts of it out. Very useful.

So kudos to Microsoft for including this functionality. I’m sure I will use it quite a bit now that I know it’s there!