Have you ever tapped your Windows keyboard's Print Screen key and been curious about its purpose since it appeared it never did anything? FYI, it actually does do something. For those who are wondering, this key grabs a screen shot and copies it onto the Windows clipboard. The copied image is then ready to be pasted into any graphics program.

Copy-pasting the screen shot can be very helpful, especially when the tech support is of no help. Sending them an image of your screen lets them know what exactly the problem is.

How a screen capture helps?

You tell the help desk: "The program crashes when I try to open a Note in Outlook. Sheesh, there's this dialog box with numbers that really knocks me off the chair. There are gazillions of them!"

The tech support replies: "Hmmm...That's a first. Weird. Hmmm...It might only be your PC. You sure it's an error message? Hmmm...Can you please read the numbers for me?"

The help desk person either thinks it's something you've done or that you're just making it up. And now the person wants you to spend a lifetime reading them the assembly code. What the heck.

This is when screen captures become very useful. When in such situation, copy an image of your entire screen to show the tech support what exactly you're talking about and e-mail the image to the IT department.

Alt-Print Screen

Grabbing screen shots is easy to do. The most basic is to press Alt-Print Screen. This copies the screen image onto the clipboard. Then open an editing program like Microsoft Paint. Choose Paste on the Edit menu. Then choose Save As on the File Menu. The advantage here is that it doesn't require a program. The problem is that captures are saved only in bitmap format. Also, saving contents is inelegant.

ScreenHunter

There is a free but better way of getting screen shots. The free version of ScreenHunter is more elegant than the basic Alt-Print Screen way. Here, you can grab a portion of the screen and then copy it to the clipboard or save it to a bitmap, GIF, or JPEG file. Try to play with it to see its value.

SnagIt

You might want to try Techsmith's SnagIt if you need industrial-strength screen shots. It allows you to grab screen shots in many ways - from specific windows and areas, to scrolling through numerous screen pages, or even freehand captures.