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While we know a lot of folks like to pan Windows Vista's new graphics as useless eye candy, there are a few aspects of the Aero interface that are actually pretty useful. For example, in Windows Vista you can get a real-time thumbnail preview of running applications by scrolling over the Windows taskbar. But you can get this feature without switching operating systems, thanks to Visual ToolTip, a free application from Chris'n'Soft.

In order to run Visual ToolTip, just download and unzip the file and click on VisualToolTip.exe. The settings menu will open up, but you don't have to configure anything if you don't want to. You can just start scrolling your mouse over your taskbar to see previews of your running applications. You can click on the Visual ToolTip icon in your system tray if you do want to adjust the image size or animations.

Because Windows XP lacks some of the under the hood features included in Vista, Visual ToolTip doesn't show you real-time previews, but it will make a new snapshot every time you mouse over an icon. In other words, if you've got a video playing, you won't see a tiny video show up in the thumbnail. But you should see the frame that was playing when you moused over.

Visual ToolTip also packs a program launcher dock which you can use to replace the Windows taskbar. But there are far better dock applications out there, including RocketDock and ObjectDock if you're looking for a program launcher.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]