Printing is a ''Snap''
By Charles Miller

Every so often one of my clients will show me some new program I have never seen, or a little trick I did not know. When this happens, I am reminded how impossible it is to keep up-to-date on everything happening in the computer world.

The most recent instance was when someone showed me a neat little program named MWSnap, written by Mirek Wojtowicz from Poland. MWSnap is a small, yet powerful program to do the job the [Print Screen] key used to be able to do.

Twenty years ago it was easy enough to simply press [Print Screen] to print out a hard copy of your screen. That key can still be found on your keyboard today, but this feature essentially became obsolete with the arrival of Microsoft Windows. Since then, users have had to rely on a more convoluted series of keystrokes or buy special software to reinstate this feature.

MWSnap does this for free, as well as adding a number of useful abilities. This utility may be used to capture the desktop or a specified part of the screen.

Instead of printing, it also is possible to save the selected area of the screen to a file. The program supports BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF formats.

Drawbacks I have found while using MWSnap are minor. The program does not capture screen shots from DVD movies and certain video formats found on some web pages seem to be resistant to being saved or printed. I use two monitors, and MWSnap only works on one of them; usually the one I do not want to print. Other users comment that MWSnap causes memory use to peak and can lock up the computer. This is a problem I have yet to encounter this problem.

MWSnap can save images to the graphic file formats previously mentioned, but also allows the user to specify a selected color depth and image quality settings.

A zooming tool allows one to use the mouse to select any rectangular area of the screen and save or print only that selected area.

Among the custom configurations possible is the ability to specify hotkeys for various functions. Sadly, the one hotkey not available is the most logical one: [Print Screen]. The key is still found on every keyboard, but has largely atrophied from lack of use.

The current version of MWSnap is 3.0.0.74, last updated on July 08, 2002. That six-year-old date usually would be a big red-flag warning that the author no longer supports the program. In this case, though, it appears Wojtowicz did such a good job that no major bug-fixes were needed in those six years.

Other screen capture and screen print utilities are available. FastStone Capture, Gadwin Printscreen, UltraSnap and SnagIt are among the commercial products available. These offer a range of extended features not found in MWSnap, but if you are looking for a simple, easy-to-use program, MWSnap is hard to beat.

MWSnap is “freeware,” meaning you may download it from the internet and use it indefinitely, for no cost whatsoever. Some free programs come with a hook in the form of adware or spyware. MWSnap is not known to contain any of these potentially unwanted programs.

Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044 (415) 101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.