What can you do with that "Print Screen" button?

Cast your mind back. You've been having problems with your computer and you need to be able to tell the genius in the computer shop just what happened. You think, "I'll print the screen and take a copy to the shop and he'll know exactly what to fix and how to fix it." You turn on your printer, hold down your shift key, press the "Print Screen" key and wait for it to print. And you wait, and you wait, and you wait. Nada!

Why not? Because in the devious minds of the people who built our computers, "Print Screen" doesn't actually mean it will print to your printer—it will only print a copy to your clipboard. (The clipboard is that invisible, virtual retainer of temporary memory that lives and breathes somewhere in the gizzards of your computer. Don't quote me but it probably skulks in the RAM.)

So how do you get it to your printer? Easy! Just paste it to your word processor (Word Perfect, Open Office, MS Word, whatever) and from there you can print it.

There's another little trick you can do with your Print Screen. Sometimes you'll find a picture you want to print but you will be denied access by the hosting website. I had this problem a few weeks ago when I wanted a copy of Sidney Nolan's portrait of the Australian poet Ern Malley for my Creative Writing class. When I attempted to copy it I received the message, "Sorry, images are copyright at ernmalley.com". Not a problem. I printed the screen, copied it into a graphics program, and cropped the result. (I've since discovered other images on the Web that I could have saved easily, but didn't think to look at the time.) Is that illegal? Surely! but since I deleted the image after showing it to the class I don't feel too guilty. The interesting thing about Ern Malley is that there was never such a person. He was one of Australia's most famous literary hoaxes.

So there are a couple of things you can do with your "Print Screen" button. I hope you find them useful.