SAN FRANCISCO – Much as I love Windows 7′s window-preview thumbnails, which pop up when you mouse over any running program in the taskbar, I find them almost useless. Why? Because the thumbnails themselves are too small.

This is especially true on systems with large, high-resolution monitors. On my 22-inch LCD, for instance, the thumbnails rarely give me a clue as to what’s actually inside the program. So what’s the point of having them?

Fortunately, I’ve discovered the awesome Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customer 1.1 (W7TTC for short), a free utility that lets you make thumbnails just about any size you want.

There’s nothing to install: Just run the program, then drag the Maximum Size slider somewhere north of its default. (I tried doubling it to 400, then went all the way to the maximum: 512.) Click Apply Changes, then mouse over a running taskbar to see the results.

Yay! I’ve been waiting for a solution like this, which has been available for Vista for quite some time. And as you can see in the screenshot (click to make it larger), W7TTC offers several other taskbar adjustments as well, including spacing, margins, and delay time (i.e. the wait before thumbnails actually appear).

Amazingly, this little app was developed by 12-year-old Kishan Bagaria. He just made this 41-year-old Windows user very happy.