1

I have never use this but got some info its pretty good.

Is anyone using this on workstation or server?

If so what do you like or dislike about it ?

Whats the main purpose as to why you use it?

12 Spice ups
2

I first heard of/checked out Power Toys back in the XP era. Uncertain how long it’s been around, but at least for that long.

Using on workstation or server? Not currently. I toyed with it on my own personal machine.

Like or dislike? Some of the tweaks can be useful. It’s officially sanctioned by Microsoft rather than a 3rd party. I probably wouldn’t allow it on end user machines in an enterprise unless I had a really good use case. Some of the tools can cause unintended consequences or muddy the water support wise.

Main purpose? Add/extend functionality that Windows otherwise doesn’t support out of the box. It’s always seemed to me like a sort of beta version of possible features that may eventually make it into future releases of Windows.

6 Spice ups
3

I used to use it on my work machines, and it was one of the few “power user” apps that the security team at my last job approved of.

I mainly used it for Fancy Zones and whatever they called their universal search (which I believe has since been completely replaced by something new.)

Fancy Zones is amazing for quickly getting a consistent window layout setup and getting back to it when something messes it up (which happened a lot for me, as I was always testing different docking stations/monitors/etc.) but is less necessary with Windows 11’s window management than in earlier versions.

The universal search I used because I was constantly switching back and forth between MacOS and Windows 10, and having a consistent *the key next to space* and spacebar shortcut to find anything on any of my systems was super handy.

I’ve mostly stopped using it, though, as they kept adding more and more utilities that I didn’t use, and I found myself needing the search and fancy zones less and less in my new position, so I’ve stopped bothering to install it on new machines and when I reinstall Windows.

This is actually a different project, inspired by the XP-era project. I believe this one is officially sponsored by Microsoft, but isn’t actually made by them. Microsoft PowerToys - Windows Utilities for Power Users | Microsoft Learn

7 Spice ups
4

For Win10, it has a couple of tools I can’t live without and one or two tools I wish would fit my use case. That basically means I love it.

For Win11, those must have tools were moved into the OS. Now, its just there making me long for Win10.

7 Spice ups
5

Wasn’t there a ‘Mouse Without Boarders’ version in Power Tools at one point? I’d test it out just for that if it did…

7 Spice ups
6

I use it for this purpose also. Love me some Fancy Zones.

For those that aren’t familiar Fancy Zones lets you make custom screen layouts for snapping your apps to. Then you can hold shift while dragging an app and just snap them in

for exmaple

image
image752×388 9.4 KB
8 Spice ups
7

I had it installed but honestly, I had tools/software that handled most of this stuff already. I uninstalled it from my system cause even the tools I didn’t have that were present inside of PowerToys, didn’t prove to be that useful to me.

5 Spice ups
8
6 Spice ups
9

Yeah, that’s the one!

5 Spice ups
10

Fancy Zones, Keyboard Manager and Mouse Without Borders are my favorite tools, but I’ve never needed/wanted them on my servers.

4 Spice ups
11

I could see MWB on a server farm, should you want to manage them that way, but that’s not really a need either…

4 Spice ups
12

Not so sure how that would work in my case, as my servers are all hooked to a single monitor/keyboard/mouse and I just use a KVM. I’d hate to think of a server farm with monitors on each and every server.

3 Spice ups
13

It would have to be a pretty small farm :rofl:

I could see this being useful for our tech though, setting up multiple computers for new users…

3 Spice ups
14

FancyZones is pretty nice :slight_smile:

I also like the text extractor if you want to copy text from an image

3 Spice ups
15

I am still a fan of BGInfo, the info gathering/wallpaper changer - was perfect in large & larger or even small companies.

6 Spice ups
16

Definitely a very cool tool, but that’s part of Sysinternals and not PowerToys.

4 Spice ups
17

Workstation

It’s extra tools, so little to dislike.

Some of the ones I like are:

Always on top (self-explanatory)
Awake (stops PC sleeping)
File locksmith (removes locks on files)
Text extractor (OCR for text in images)
Advanced paste (allows pasting using different formatting)
Find my mouse (can’t see your mouse pointer, press left CTRL twice and it will light up)
Image resizer (does what it says)
Mouse highlighter (enables the mouse pointer to be coloured in like a highlighter on click, good for recording screens)
PowerRename (allow renaming files en mass)

It’s for sure worth trying them yourself, I use many of the above, often.

6 Spice ups
18

Yes, I don’t use Power Tools at all these days, not really needed but quite a few of the SysInternals tools are still useful, PSping that lets you ping a particular port is one I use quite a bit.

5 Spice ups
19

You mean PowerToys.

Power Tools are for fixing cabinets.

6 Spice ups
20

I know its in the Win11 version of PowerToys:

image
image863×621 43.6 KB
4 Spice ups