Vispa is xpy for Vista
Vispa is a free software that lets you change and disable many features of Windows Vista that you may not like or make use of. I'm thinking of features that phone home to Microsoft servers, automatic updates, usability options and many more. The tool has a size of only 50 Kilobyte and can be run from any location.
It displays the following categories that all have several entries that can be tweaked: General, Services, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Usability and Delete Files. The general and services categories seem to be the most interesting ones. You can disable automatic windows updates, time synchronization and services like this there.
I don't want to go over all of the dozens of settings that can be changed but want to point out some deficits of the software. The current version is not designed for beginners unfortunately. There is no online help and no balloon tip explaining what a setting does which means that you either have to know what you are doing or research the setting on the Internet before you change it.
There are however a few things that I like as well. It is a lightweight program not using lots of system resources and not that bloated like other Vista tweaking tools that I tested.
Update: The program is now named XPy and compatible with older and newer versions of Windows as well. It is for instance compatible with Windows XP and Windows 7 on top of still being compatible with Vista.
The selection menu on top can be used to modify all settings as once as it makes modifications right away when you select one of the presets here.
It is generally recommended not to do that but to modify settings individually instead. You find a lot of tweaks here, more than a hundred in total I would say. This means that it will take some time to go through all of them, especially if you do not know what particular features or settings do so that you have to research them to find out.
Good news is that it is rather extensive so that you can modify your operating system in many different ways.
Verdict
I recommend Vispa Xpy to anyone who wants to change several settings in a short time.
I was looking for a tool like that – some Vista default settings are really annoying. Thanks for the link!
Now I have to search for the site, why not just post a link.