Vista Tips and Tricks

I have only been running Vista on a test machine for about a month or so. So far, I am not impressed. It looks “cutesy” and is not compatible with most of the software that I use in my day to day operations. So, I will not be upgrading anytime in the foreseable future. However, here are a few tricks that I have discovered to make this OS more manageable.

1. If you hate the look of Aero, click Start/Control Panel/Themes and you can choose a non-Aero theme, such as Windows Classic.
2. If, for some reason, the Vista installation gets interrupted due to an unintentional shutdown or reboot, start the computer without booting the Vista DVD. Windows Vista's installer should pick up where it left off. If it doesn't, then restart the installation over from scratch.
3. When you perform a search with Vista's new, instant search feature, you can save the search in a special folder. This powerful feature allows you to create a virtual folder which, by default, is saved in your \\Searches\ folder. Every time you open such a folder, the search results are updated.
4. In Windows Vista, you can add additional clocks to the system tray. Click the clock, and then click Date and Time Settings. Click the Additional Clocks tab. You can add one or two additional clocks to the tray and select their time zones.
5. If you upgrade your graphics card in preparation for Windows Vista, be sure to get a new card with as much local memory as possible. Since Windows Vista renders everything—even the desktop and windows them-selves—as 3D surfaces, local 3D memory greatly improves performance...sometimes even more than a more powerful GPU.
6. Several applications are available to help you tweak Windows Vista for maximum performance. They in-clude TweakVI (www.totalidea.com), TweakVista (www.tweakvista.com/tweakvistautility), and VistaBootPRO (www.vistabootpro.org). And don't forget about Windows ReadyBoost, which lets you use a removable flash memory drive to boost system memory

Office 2007 runs faster than what I was expecting and DO go in and change the power settings beneath the High Performance, this will help out a lot. I do find that the requirements are still a little steep and it really shows if you do not have enough resources to through at Vista. It will just sit there and laugh at you – “Is this all you got??? Game on!”