Selecting items

Welcome to 2009, coming ready or not! To kick off the year, here's a couple of tips about selecting items.
There are various ways to select multiple files in a list in an open folder. To select all, press Ctrl-A. To select a group of contiguous items, select the first of those you want, then scroll to the last and hold down the Shift key while selecting the last. To select individual items not next to each other, hold down the Control key while selecting. (Click again on an individual item to de-select it.) This principle works in many programs, too; for instance, in email programs.
And according to PC World magazine, there is an undocumented feature in the new Windows Vista operating system that provides a check box alongside items in a list. You simply click the check box for each file you want to select. To enable this handy option, open any system window (like My Computer or Explorer), click the Organize menu, and then choose Folder and Search Options. Next, click the View tab, and then scroll down until you see "Use check boxes to select items." Enable it, then click OK. Sadly, this feature is not available in Windows XP, which I still use.
Incidentally, you can select discontinuous text in Microsoft Word in the same way (from version 2003 onwards), by holding down the Control key and dragging across the text. I don't know whether this works in Word clones, such as OpenOffice.org.