Aerofoil is another program that can help extend Windows Vista laptop battery life by turning off Windows Aero and the Windows Sidebar.

Aerofoil does not rely on the Microsoft .net Framework on the other hand which is probably the most important factor. The computer memory footprint of Aerofoil is therefor much smaller than that of the other program. Plus, it does not require that a specific Microsoft .Net Framework version is installed on the computer to function at all.

The program can be selected to run at startup. It will place a icon in the system tray which can be used to quickly access the available options seen above. It is probably a good idea to have this or any of the other tools running on Vista laptops that run on battery.

Update: Aerofoil has been updated lately. It now supports both Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program’s feature set has also been extended with the more recent updates. In particular, it can be used for the following purposes:

• Disable Aero Glass manually
• Manage the Windows Aero user interface
• Manage power plans of the operating system
• Manage the sidebar of Windows Vista
• Enable a quick hibernate button.

The program has not been tested extensively under Windows 7. The developer notes however that it should provide the same functionality on that operating system.

There is however a second possibility. Third party software that can load themes into Windows Vista. These programs usually patch the files themselves. One of those software programs that can install Vista themes automatically is Style Selector.

Style Selector is a free 200 Kilobyte portable application that runs on 32-bit editions of Windows Vista. New Vista themes have to be moved into the Styles folder. The Vista theme has to make use of a .styles file to be recognized by the software program.

Vista themes that have been moved into the folder are automatically recognized by the application. Selecting the Vista theme in the list of available themes and clicking on the Apply button will load that theme into Windows Vista.

The Startup box can be checked to apply the Vista theme during startup so that the new theme will be available even after a reboot of the system. The same preferences allow to pick a default font and font size which will then be used as the standard font in Windows Vista.

Update: Style Selector is no longer available. The developer website returns an error and no download portal seems to carry the download.

The Windows Vista theme customization application Vista Visual Master changes that. It is a all in one solution for everyone who wants to customize the Windows Vista theme and appearance. The application can be divided into two sections. The first deals directly with the Windows Vista theme while the second takes care of system settings that relate to the visual appearance of Windows Vista.

One of the most important aspects of Windows Vista theme customization is patching the uxtheme.dll file in Windows Vista to be able to apply custom themes to the operating system. This option is available in Vista Visual Master. The same menu contains an option to change the Windows Vista theme directly to another one.

Other options that relate to the visual appearance of Windows Vista are the abilities to change Windows vista icons, logon pictures and the vista boot screen. All options are easily accessible and there is always an option to restore to defaults with should ease the minds of users who feel uncomfortable about changing system files in Windows Vista.

The second section is just the usual Windows Vista tweaker with the only difference that the available settings relate to visual effects on the system. It is for instance possible to remove icons from the computer deskop, remove shortcut arrows and to disable the changing of wallpapers in Windows Vista.

The main use of the tool is to customize the Windows Vista theme. It works flawlessly and creates backups of the most important files which come in handy if something goes wrong along the way.

Joshua’s recommendation was to try out the Vista Start Menu application in previous Microsoft operating systems like Windows XP. The differences in Windows Vista were not important enough to justify the replacement in Windows Vista though.

So what are the main benefits of Vista Start Menu? Vista Start Menu adds several functions on top and below the start menu that are not available in the default versions. The top bar contains all the logout, user switching and shutdown options which are accessible by hotkeys and the mouse. The bottom bar contains options to perform a local search, to open the run box and to perform a Google Search. Each with its own hotkey for faster access to speed up Vista and other operating systems it is installed on.

The Vista start menu itself got a revamp and some features were included that make lots of sense. The start menu is completely resizable and it can even be placed on any part of the monitor screen. The entries of the start menu stay in place even if an application gets uninstalled from the system which works great in combination with the hotkeys to open applications or menus with just the keyboard.

Vista Start Menu is compatible to all Windows NT operating systems including 64-bit versions.

On the downside the ability to restore files using the Volume Shadow Copy Service is only available for Windows Vista Ultimate, Enterprise and Business editions.

Shadow Explorer is a software for Windows Vista that makes it possible to restore files using the Volume Shadow Copy Service on all versions of Windows Vista. The program can be installed under Windows XP but it does not work if you execute it.

Shadow Explorer requires administrative privileges to be started. The interface is then providing an explorer like window with information about the stored shadow copies in the header area.

The user can select a different version of the shadow copy that has been saved by using the pulldown menu at the top.

A right-click on selected files or folders opens up a context menu with the option to restore these.

The user can restore files in the same folder or another one. A confirmation dialog pops up if he tries to restore the files in the same folder because they would overwrite the existing files obviously.

A message appears at the end of the operation telling the user if the file restore operation was successful.

Preview Config was developed to offer a comfortable way to add new file extensions to the list of supported file extensions. Before I explain the software I’m going to show you how you can enable the Preview Pane in Windows Vista. To enable it you need to click on Organize | Layout | Preview Pane in the folder’s menu.

Once you start Preview Config you notice a large list of file extensions on the left side. Selecting a file extension from the left menu will display information about it in the right pane. It will display if there if the file is currently set for previews and if that is the case if it is a text file, multimedia file or Other. Adding new file extensions to the preview pane is therefor done in a matter of seconds.

The user picks a file extension from the left pane and selects the appropriate type in the right pane. For php for instance it would be plain-text. The tool can be used to unregister previews for certain file types as well.

All five are benchmarked by Vista which assigns a score between 1.0 and 5.9 at the end. All five sub scores are then used to calculate the Windows Experience Rating. The weakest score is 1.0 while the highest score currently possible lies at 5.9.

Microsoft will add higher scores every 12-18 months to reflect changes in the hardware market. There won’t be a system that currently gets a score higher than 5.9 unless you tweak it with System Point.

It is possible to change the Windows Experience rating and all five sub scores with System Point which means that you should not rely on that score if someone sells you an used computer running Windows Vista. It’s great for fooling friends though.

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via: My Digital Life