AquaSnap

Some of the best things about Windows 7 are the window-management tools under the Aero umbrella. Aero Snap, Aero Shake, and Aero Glass do nothing less than make Windows 7 competitive with Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard on the window management front. They pop visually, they’re fun to use, and most importantly, they’re useful ways of managing windows. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak them, and for people who want more out of their Aero, there’s AquaSnap.

AquaSnap gives users fine-tuning control to change the Snap/Shake/Glass functionality, customize the Aqua features, toggle at will between Aero and Aqua, or disable them. Where Aero Snap makes windows resize as maximized or to half the width of the monitor, AquaSnap adds in quarter-screen sizes. There’s also a custom option, and it’s multimonitor compatible. For some odd reason, the Snap features required a reboot before they worked, when the Shake and Peek ones didn’t.

AquaShake changes Aero Shake from minimizing all other windows to making them transparent. Users can toggle the transparency level and the shake sensitivity. AquaGlass actually doesn’t change or improve on Aero Glass. Instead, it makes windows transparent when you drag them around the monitor. You can adjust the transparency here, too, but this is most useful when you click and hold on a window to quickly see what’s beneath it. A useful but not killer feature.

AquaSnap is an excellent customization tool that works well and didn’t add any noticeable drag to system resources. You can change whether it runs on start-up, and AquaSnap can also be used to port the Snap/Shake/Peek features to legacy Windows systems, where the program is likely to be most useful.