Which is why I am quite delighted that Maplin have a TFT screen cleaner on sale at half price, that actually does a good job.

The triangular shape and stiff backing mean it gets in those corners, and the squirty spray gets rid of embrrassing projectile sandwich remains, and yet leaves no trace of streak behind.

This should be such an easy thing to do, and important since we all gawp at screens morning, noon and night. But I’ve spent a lot more in the past and got a lot less…

But I have to admit, the outlandish new “Characters” and “Scenes” themes have had me grinning like a Cheshire Cat. I never thought I’d say this, but this new edition of Windows really is beautiful.

And though it looks great out of the box, there’s one quick tweak I can recommend to make it look even better.

Calibrating your display

Many graphics drivers come with tools to let you adjust the curve between dark and light shades (known as gamma) to suit your monitor. In principle, it’s nothing new: but what is new in Windows 7 is a standard built-in calibrator that makes it all but effortless to get the best from your screen.

The control is hidden away in a sub-pane of the Display settings, but you can jump to it instantly by simply hitting the start button and typing “calibrate”: the first option will be “Calibrate display colour”.

Launch it and it’ll walk you through a few introductory pages, then give you a slider to to adjust your gamma. All you need to do is move the slider up or down until the grey dots in the test image are, as closely as possible, the same shade as the circles surrounding them.

On almost every system I’ve calibrated, the default setting has been too high, resulting in a washed-out display. Pulling the slider downward gives greater weight to dark items (such as text) while bringing out detail in bright areas and adding vibrancy to colours. It’s like a free monitor upgrade.

For your eyes only

Of course, the advantages of this adjustment are subjective and limited to your own PC: colours probably won’t print out exactly as they appear on your screen, and when you share photographs with others you may find that what looks great for you appears overexposed on a different display. But that’s always been a problem: now at least what you personally see should reflect the best your hardware is capable of.

The calibration tool also helps you set the brightness and contrast controls on your monitor, and lets you adjust the overall colour balance, to compensate for any slight colour cast in your display. It can also launch the ClearType tuner to make text as readable as possible.

But while those are worthwhile adjustments, but none of them is likely to have as dramatic an effect as simply dragging that slider a little way down its scale.

This is my desk. Beautiful, isn’t it? Until today, it’s been one of the few in the PC Pro office not to sport a second (or even a third) screen. I had my 19in TFT running off my laptop and I was happy with my lot. I’d never extended the desktop on to my idling laptop screen, largely because doing so in Windows XP was a bit of a faff.

Not so in Windows 7 – a quick tweak with the display settings, and hey presto, my laptop was immediately pressed into service. But now I don’t know what to do with all that extra screen space! Several of my colleagues use their secondary screen for email, but my failing eyesight can barely cope with the email on my larger screen, let alone the laptop’s squidged display.

So, I’m asking you, the great PC Pro readership, for your suggestions. What can I stick on that barren desert landscape? I’ll liberate something from our cupboard of discarded kit for the best suggestion.

Essentially, it’s a screen for a projector, albeit one that wraps the image around you, immersing the eager gamer in a 180 degree world. The possibilities, surely, are endless: tramping through the lush jungles of Crysis will be even more immersive, and you really can be a Supreme Commander if the battlefield is stretched around you. World in Conflict, Unreal Tournament 3, Tabula Rasa: all will benefit.

Imagine, if you will, Football Manager: statistics as far as the eye can see, and the 2D match engine will surely look revolutionary when you’re surrounded by it.

The uses, then, are endless, and I’m sure that the adult film industry is already working on a way to exploit the new technology. The best thing about it, though, is the price. Surely a piece of kit like this will cost thousands? Maybe not – depending on funding being sought, the creator aims to sell the jDome for between $125 and $200. A totally immersive, semi-circular screen for little more than a couple of games? Count me in.