This past weekend, I tagged along with my brother on a trip to Fry’s (an electronics store) to help him decide on what new monitors to get. I was pretty surprised at how much the normal size and quality has gone up since I last paid attention. In February two years ago, I bought two 1680×1050 19″ monitors for $230 a piece. Now, you can buy a 1920×1080 24″ monitor for that.
While comparing them, I saw a monitor that looked a little glossy, so I thought I’d change the desktop background to black to see just how glossy it was.
I right-clicked on the desktop and didn’t see an obvious “Change Desktop Background” or “Change Wallpaper” option. There was an option for “Next desktop background,” which just switched to another picture as the current background was apparently set to be a slideshow, and the only semi-likely option: “Personalize.” Guess what? Personalize was not the correct choice.
At that point, I didn’t care enough and moved on to look at some other monitors, but I became curious today and looked online. A simple search revealed 24 million results, one of which was Microsoft’s solution.
Open Desktop Background by clicking the Start button and clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type desktop background, and then click Change desktop background.
Microsoft actually has a video to demonstrate because it is overly complicated. Vista was terrible, so Windows 7 doesn’t have to do a great job to seem impressive, but I expected a better user experience.
For reference, in OS X you would right-click and pick “Change desktop background…” and in Ubuntu (Gnome) you would right-click and pick “Change Desktop Background.” In Vista you would right-click and pick “Personalize” and then pick “Desktop Background.”
