Using PrintScreen in Boot Camp: MacBook Pro

Ian Luke Kane — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 20:59:22 +0000

I just spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to take screen shots in Windows XP on my MacBook Pro (using Boot Camp). I thought I would write up the simplest answer of how to do this, in the sense that you don’t have to install anything or remap your keyboard. Here’s all you have to do:

Under the Start menu, select All Programs, then Accessories, then Accessibility, and then On-Screen Keyboard. When you do this the Windows XP on-screen keyboard will appear on your screen. This on-screen utility includes the PrintScreen button (labelled psc in the same position as where the F13 key should be located. That’s it.

If you want to take a screen shot of only the active window (using the Alt+psc command), make sure that the on-screen keyboard isn’t in the area of the active window, otherwise it will be included in the screen shot.

Anyway, I searched around for far too long to find that little piece of information, so hopefully someone in the same predicament will easily be able to find this post (and the answer)! Since the Apple external keyboards actually include the F13 key (while the MacBook and MacBook Pro built-in keyboards do not), you can use PrintScreen slightly easier with the plugged-in keyboard.

UPDATE: As pointed out by Stuart in the comments below, if you’re using Boot Camp v. 1.3, Fn + F11 now maps to print screen. You can print only the active window with Option + Fn + F11. Thanks for the tip!

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Brief Macbook Pro Review

Ian Luke Kane — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:00:24 +0000

I am the proud owner of a 15″ Macbook Pro. It has 2GB of RAM. My iBook only had 256MB of RAM. Think about it. I must say that I’m extremely pleased so far with the purchase. Even Dreamweaver and MS Office are running really well under Rosetta. I really can’t complain at all about the performance. I’ve also installed Boot Camp, so I’m also running Windows XP. I’ve decided not to worry about either Vista or Office 2007 until the summer. By that point a lot of people and businesses will have moved over. So far I have to say that Windows is running quite well. Once I do some heavier duty stuff I’ll report back on what I’ve found. I thought about using Parallels but decided against it for the time being. I’ll wait until Leopard to see if Apple will enable users to switch between operating systems without having to reboot. If that’s the case I have no reason to buy Parallels (other than to easily play with Linux). Otherwise I’ll have to reconsider. As far as my other software needs are concerned, TeXShop was already available as a universal binary, and TeX installed really easily on the machine. Time will tell. If anyone has any particular questions about what I think about the computer let me know. The self-portrait in this post was taken with the built-in iSight camera.

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Using PrintScreen in Boot Camp: MacBook Pro

Brief Macbook Pro Review