Showing the desktop with OS X Lion

Have you been frustrated with how to clear away your open applications in OS X Lion (and now Mountain Lion) so you can see the desktop? I used to have a key mapped on my keyboard to do just that with earlier versions of OS X but it changed with the king of the kitties. However, it is still possible to do just that with the following handy key combination:

CMD + F3

Watch as your applications fly into the corners of the screen :)

Remote Desktop Connection for Macs

today I discovered a cool tool available from Microsoft. As 'The only Mac in the village' it is important that I can interact with Windows users and wondered if there was any way of me being bale to make a remote desktop connection to a Windows machine without going through Parallels (which, as cool as it is, does put a strain on system resources). I found that I can using a piece of software that is free on Microsoft's 'Mactopia' site:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=remotedesktopclient

In 5 minutes, I was able to be maintaining the Windows server on the other side of the room. The only downside is that the colours are in a low resolution but it doesn't matter if it allows you the ability to make some important config change remotely.

Hats off to Microsoft on this one!