Portable AquaSnap

Designed as the portable counterpart of AquaSnap, this is a clear-cut software application that can change the way your windows snap on your desktop.

It borrows the Aero Snap and Aero Shake features from Windows 7 to make them available on Windows XP and Vista. The app contains some simple-to-understand configuration settings that apply desktop changes immediately.

As there is no setup kit involved, you can save the program files anywhere on the disk and just click the executable to launch AquaSnap. Otherwise, you can save a copy to a pen drive to directly run it on any PC effortlessly. It doesn't alter the Windows registry configuration.

The app can be asked to automatically run at every Windows startup until further notice, check for updates, and show an icon in the system tray area for quickly accessing its options.

When it comes to the window type, the tool can view windows as independent or child windows of a multi document interface (MDI). You can disable AeroSnap, switch to simple mode (snap on the upper, lower, right and left corner or the screen), advanced mode (adds snapping to each corner of the screen), or custom mode, where you can personalize the snapping behavior for each margin and corner.

Other Windows 7 features can be toyed with too. For instance, you can shake a window to minimize all the others or to make it stay on top of other frames, and adjust the sensibility, speed and duration levels.

You can also enable AquaGlass and tweak the transparency, as well as activate keyboard shortcuts when it comes to window management (maximize, minimize, close, always on top), docking to a specific screen margin or corner, stretching, and moving windows to other monitors.

As expected, AquaSnap's impact on system resources was minimal, thanks to the fact that it needed low CPU and memory to work well. It didn't trigger the OS to hang, crash or prompt errors.

Taking into consideration its intuitive and powerful options, AquaSnap can become quite a useful ally for enabling Windows 7 features on Windows XP and Vista.