ZoomIt : Zoom in Your Entire Windows Desktop

Microsoft Windows comes with a magnifier tool pre-installed but it does not offer many options or gives bigger area of screen to zoom in. If you want more control over zooming of your desktop area then you can try the free Systinternals tool ZoomIt. ZoomIt is a desktop zoom and annotation tool, that enables you to zoom your desktop with your wheel mouse or the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard. It is activated with a customizable keyboard shortcut, and can also be used to draw on your desktop (with or without zoom), using a customizable color and pen width.

You can download ZoomIt from the Sysinternals website. The download is a mere 275 kilobytes ZIP file. You can just extract the contents from this file and run the ZoomIt.exe. It is a portable application and does not require any installation. When you run it, you would be shown a window where you can set different hotkeys for zooming in, live zoom, draw, type and break.

ZoomIt - Screen Magnifier in Windows

The basic zoom function has the default keyboard shortcut Ctrl + 1. This offers basic zooming in and out of your entire Windows desktop. But it does not do the live zooming – it just takes the picture of your desktop and magnifies it. The Live Zoom has a default keyboard shortcut Ctrl + 4 and it does the live zooming – meaning that you can use Windows as usual even in the zoom mode. The Draw and Type modes allow you to draw and type text on the zoomed desktop. You can use pens of many colors, and erase your drawing to start all over again. These modes are very useful when you are doing a presentation in a meeting or conference. The Break section in the options allows you to set a timer, which blanks your screen and starts a countdown timer. This timer can be used at presentations when audience is waiting for the next orator.

ZoomIt is a portable application which is very convenient to use. You can put in your USB stick and use it on any Windows PC at your office meeting or college presentation. You can download ZoomIt from the Microsoft Technet site at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb897434.