I know you can use Print Screen button to capture screenshot and paste it to Microsoft Word or Paint but sometimes it’s just too much step for someone who’s scared to even turn on or off the computer! Yeah, I’ve been there… I had a customer who know nothing about computer and it’s just so hard for him to describe the problem. So the way is to take a screenshot of his computer. Funny part was, it actually created another problem when trying to get him taking a screenshot of his problem. Sigh…

But I still like to see the problem instead of them telling me “my computer is not working“. What I usually do is ask them to download a free screenshot capture program which can easily take a screenshot of his desktop and then either send it to me or via email or instant messenger.

I found this free screenshot capture program called “Capture-A-ScreenShot“. What I like about this tool is it’s simple and easy to use. Even though installation is needed but there’s a way to bypass that. Just run a single EXE file and you can capture screenshots.

You can capture the entire screen, which includes your traybar, taskbar and whatever is displayed on the screen. Or, you can capture Active Window, meaning only the running program that you’re looking at will be captured. Another great feature is “selection”, which you can use your mouse to capture the area that you want to.

By default, Capture-A-ScreenShot saves the file at your desktop with the file name capture1.jpg and the number at the end continues. You can easily change that by clicking the Browse button and specify the new location where you want it to be saved. I tried capturing my desktop and the filesize is only 200+KB.

Usually I don’t ask my customers to download and install the setup file directly because it might confuse them with the installation. This program can actually run by itself without any DLL files. So what I do is, I download cassetup.exe, install it on my computer, go to C:\Program Files\Capture-A-ScreenShot and upload the Capture-A-ScreenShot.exe to my website. I will ask my customer to download Capture-A-ScreenShot.exe from my website and then they can capture screenshot with it.

It’s a very simple freeware, so don’t expect to have any fancy features such as image editing and etc in it. If you have any better or easier ideas on how to capture desktop screenshot easily that won’t confuse a person who knows nothing about computer, feel free to drop a comment.

[ Download Capture-A-ScreenShot ]

[tags]screenshot, screen shot, freeware, software, popdrops[/tags]