Lifehacker have an article up on their website detailing the process of switching from the default fonts used by most websites and the computer system to the Vista fonts. This is easier done than one would think. A user who wants to enable those fonts in the Firefox web browser needs to have a working installation of Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office 2007 or the free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2007. This ensures that the Vista fonts are installed on the computer system. Vista users do not need to perform this operation since their operating system ships with those fonts.

The next step involves switching to ClearType if the computer is connected to an LCD monitor. This can be done with a powertoy from Microsoft.

It is then time to configure Firefox to use the Vista fonts instead of the default fonts after installation of the fonts and enabling ClearType. This is done in the Tools > Options > Content menu. A click on the advanced button under Fonts & Colors will display the following configuration menu. Just switch to the same fonts and settings that are shown in the following image:

It is important to uncheck the checkbox at the bottom to prevent pages from selecting the fonts. The result can be a better readability and is something worth to try.

Related posts

• Fully Replace Windows XP Fonts with Windows Vista fonts (6)
• Youtube It Firefox Add-on (4)
• Youtube Comment Cloud Firefox Add-On (4)
• Xenocode Web Browser Sandbox (0)
• XdN Tweaker for Windows (3)

Taskbar Resize Tool is a small program for Windows Vista that can alter the heights of individual items in the Windows Vista taskbar. The software requires the installation of the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (download) before the program can be executed. The software itself comes with a English and Chinese interface.

The software is portable and will display a slider after execution which can be used to change the height of the taskbar items.

A click on the Apply button will change the size of each item immediately. All settings will be reverted after a restart which is why the only option in the program interface is to add the application to system startup.

Related posts

• Vista4Experts Windows Vista Tweaker (1)
• Use Dreamscene On Windows XP (14)
• Readyboost Monitor (3)
• Microsoft Touchless (5)
• Youtube Video Search Is A Barebone Youtube Downloader (2)

Of course I have to make mention to back up your data! You never know when something could happen to cause you to lose precious files.

So, without further adieu, let’s begin.

Fundamentals

Before we go into the how to on this it is best to discuss what dual booting is and how it is possible. I will mention that the most important issue with setting up a dual booting machine is that Windows MUST be installed first. Because the Windows boot manager is a very single-minded boot manager, it will not recognize any other operating system. To that end, the Linux bootloader must be used.

Now dual booting is exactly as you would expect: A single machine with multiple, working operating systems installed. Upon boot of the machine the Linux boot loader (typically Grub) allows you to select which operating system to boot. This set up is very nice for those wanting to make the transition to Linux or want to use Linux but have Windows to play games on.

Getting Vista Ready

Vista did some things right. One such thing is hard drive partitioning. With Vista you are able to resize a parition, on the fly, without damaging data. Microsoft hid this tool a bit, so you have to know where it is. To open up the Computer Management tool click on the start menu and then right click the Computer entry.

Click on the Manage entry from this new menu to open up the Computer Management tool.

Now it’s time to click on the Disk Management entry. Once you click on that you will see your machine’s hard drive in all its partition’d glory.

There are two parititions on this drive. The larger partition (141.61 GB) is the partition to resize. Right click on that parition to open up a new menu. From this new menu select the “Shrink” entry.

Partition managing menu

Once you select Shrink a new window will appear asking you how much to shrink the drive.

Shrink window

The amount of space to shrink will be the partition your Linux installation is on, so make sure you create enough space.

Once you click the Shrink button your machine will go to work resizing your partition. Once the partition has been resized there will be unallocated space on your drive.

In the image above I only resized the parition a small amount. You will need to create a much larger portion of unallocated space to install Linux.

Once the partition has been resized, it’s time to load Linux.

Installing Linux

Since there are numerous distributions I will only touch on the key aspects you need to watch for. Most likely you will be installing from a LiveCD so boot the LiveCD up. Once the LiveCD has finished booting click on the Install icon to begin the installation process. The first section you need to pay close attention to is the partitioning of the hard drive. What you need to do is make sure the installation uses the free space on the drive. You most likely will have to select the Manual partitioning, but don’t let that scare you. Once you select Manual you will have options to select. There should be the equivalent of using only the free space on your hard drive. Do NOT select anything remotely equivalent to Use Entire Disk. If you make this selection your Windows installation will be erased.

Once the installation partitions the drive it will install all the files it needs. Upon completion of the system installation it will be time to install the boot loader. Just accept the defaults because the Linux boot loader must be the first thing to load on the machine.

Once the boot loader is installed it’s time to reboot. You will notice when you boot (again the exact wording and look of this will depend upon the distribution chosen) there will be a few boot entries. The default entry will be the Linux operating system. If you do nothing within 10 seconds Linux will boot. You can use your arrow keys to select the Windows choice and hit enter to boot into Windows.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations, you now have a dual booting Vista/Ubuntu machine. It’s really that simple.  If you need to have a guided tour of a Linux installation, take a look at my Illustrated Guide to Installing Ubuntu.

Related posts

• Triple Boot Vista, XP and Ubuntu (5)
• Preparing myself for Linux and Vista (9)
• My First Tryst with Ubuntu: Things Worked. Mostly. (19)
• How to Repair the Vista Bootloader (8)
• Adding Windows Vista and Kubuntu to Windows XP (5)

The pre-beta release is distributed to a select group of testers who have to run a program that adds a few keys to their Registry which enables the download of Windows Vista service pack 2 on Windows Update.

The release which has the build number 6002.16489 has a size between 290.7 MB to 296.9 MB. It contains all released updates but no obvious changes or additional features according to Within Windows.

KB955430 is the hotfix that has to be installed after making the changes to the Windows Registry. After installing that hotfix the real Windows Vista Service Pack 2 download becomes visible in Windows Update.

It will probably be only a matter of time until the Registry changes leak on the Internet which would enable the Service Pack 2 downloads for anyone making the changes to their Registry.

Related posts

• Windows Vista SP2 Registry Hack (11)
• Windows Vista SP2 Details (2)
• Windows Vista SP2 Beta 6002.16497 Released (3)
• Windows Vista SP2 Beta 2 Download (3)
• Windows Vista SP1 WGA Changes (2)

Users who want to change the language of their Windows Vista operating system will soon realize that it is not as easy as they thought it would be. Especially Vista Home users are left standing in the rain because there is no official way of changing the language of the operating system.

The Windows Vista Multi-language User Interface Hacker (via Raymond)is a third party software that was specifically designed for the purpose of changing the language of a Windows Vista operating system. It works by downloading the program files, the selected MUI language pack and a lengthy conversion in the software application that can take between 5 and 60 minutes depending on the computer’s performance.

After that is is simply a matter of selecting the installed language in the program’s interface and restarting the computer.

Download links to all available language packs are provided in the software program so that the user can simply download it right away. Switching back to the original language is not a big problem either. It is simply a matter of downloading the right MUI and applying the same procedure to the file.

Related posts

• Manage Favorite Links In Windows Vista (0)
• Windows Vista Shrink Volume Problems (5)
• Fix Windows Vista Resetting Folder View Settings (4)
• Enable or disable the Windows Firewall in Vista in one click (4)
• Add Run Box to Vista Start Menu (4)

The Windows Vista Ultimate extras that have been released are Windows Dreamscene, a video background application, A Hold’Em Poker game, a puzzle game called Tinker that comes with an extra sound scheme, two additional sound schemes, various MUI language packs and the Bitlocker and EFS Enhancement tools.

And that’s it. The main focus seems to be on entertainment which is probably a sector that most Windows Vista Ultimate users do not care about. To be fair, Windows Vista Ultimate is the only edition of Windows Vista that provides all features of the operating system by combining Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Enterprise in one software package.

The reason for this post? Well Microsoft released new extras which have already been mentioned in the second paragraph: The Tinker game that includes the sound scheme and another Dreamscene package.

Users who bought Windows Vista Ultimate for the extras can rejoice and enjoy another background and some new sounds. How many will be happy with the new extras? Take an educated guess.

Related posts

• Yuck new Windows Vista Ultimate Extras (20)
• Windows Vista Editions – Do you know the differences ? (6)
• Windows Vista SP1 WGA Changes (2)
• Windows Vista SP1 Refresh 2 is Vista SP1 RTM (0)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)

This is my personal list of things of what I’d like to see changed, fixed or included in Windows 7:

Performance:
The biggie… I’m popping this in because it wouldn’t be a real wish-list without it. Personally I find Vista to perform great, better then XP definitely on decent hardware, however I’d love to see Windows 7 just kick Mac OSX and Linux’s ass as far as performance goes.

This is the major topic under discussion in Steven Sinofsky’s Engineering Seven blog. 

Faster Functional Desktop
Sure, I get a boot time pretty close to Microsoft’s benchmarks, however what they don’t mention is that even though the desktop is loaded, a lot of background processes are still going on in the background. It’s a good minute before I get a functional desktop after booting.

Windows Task Bar
I would love for Windows 7 to include some dramatic changes to the taskbar. I don’t mean visually or functionally but things like some new features for the Quick Launch bar, more options for creating menus and folders on the bar and things like that. Also why isn’t doesn’t the Quick Launch bar use the same theme as the taskbar? It looks ugly.

Bloody Annoying Deletion Bug
Sure you can use Unlocker but it would be really nice if Vista actually deleted what I wanted to delete! For me this is the single-most most frustratingly annoying thing in Vista.

Multiple Desktop Support
Everyone else has them, no third party app does it decently yet. It is time.

UI Consistency
Hopefully Windows 7 contain essentially the same Aero theme as Vista and the developers can work on fixing all the UI bugs and inconsistencies across the system. Check out Long Zheng’ Aero Taskforce for some examples.

Redesign ‘Personalise’
I have no idea what they where thinking when they changed all these options around but it’s really annoying trying to work out where is where and navigating between. Make it easier to change all appearance related settings from one place!

System Tray
Do something here, I’m not sure what. It seems especially buggy in Vista, icon menus freezing up and that kind of thing.

Improve Windows Search
Search is fantastic in Vista and I understand why it takes a few seconds to get results, however I really think for simply searching amongst start menu program icons it should be dramatically improved. When I’m searching for a file I can wait a few seconds, when I just want to launch ‘Word’ I’d like instant results as soon as I type ‘Wo…’

Also some more intuitive functions would be nice, similar to Launchy, learning from usage patterns and picking up on typos. I would also be more likely to use virtual folders more if performance was better.

Calculator functions from Start Menu
Why not? It seems pointless to open up the actual app when you could do it straight from the search box.

Multiple Monitors
It’d be great to have a taskbar which stretches across multiple monitors and options for wallpapers to do the same, or perhaps even choose two wallpapers for 2 monitors.

Annoying Notification Popups
Need I say more?

Explorer Doesn’t remember folder settings.

Networking and Sharing
This is a joke, the Network and Sharing center is way too many clicks away and sharing media between devices is incredibly convoluted and confusing.

Related posts

• WinFS, Was it Really so Good? (1)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Windows Vista Editions – Do you know the differences ? (6)
• Windows Longhorn Blog (0)

You will also be aware that WinFS was removed from the feature list when the Longhorn project was reset.

The lack of real discussion and comment from Microsoft seems to have led to a great deal of speculation, rumour and myth concerning the WinFS file system which really has more in common with the “Microsoft should rewrite Windows” movement of thought than actual reality.

I know personally I had a lot of misconceptions about the whole thing, perhaps due to the fact I’m a non-programmer. What confused me the most was the while using Vista I came across a lot of functionality which seemingly resembled the WinFS I had heard so much about, yet I frequently heard the comments about Vista being pointless because it lacked the promised Longhorn features.

However Ed Bott’s article “Why Do You Want WinFS?” explained a lot and after checking it out and reading around I discovered a lot of interesting things. Apologies if this is old news to you, hopefully some of you will find this interesting:

WinFS was never going to replace NTFS:

WinFS was not a new file system designed to replace NTFS, it was a system designed to run on top of NTFS, which potentially provided the capability to be moved between OS’s:

“WinFS is based on SQL Server and its core feature is to provide a data relations mechanism. This means that your pictures are related to dates, events, and persons and so on. This allows you to perform a search such as "All pictures of Joe taken the last month". This query is not possible for a traditional file system such as NTFS, but will be a trivial part of WinFS. In reality, WinFS stores are simply SQL Server database files (.mdf files) with the FILESTREAM feature enabled. These files are stored in secured folder named "System Volume Information" placed into the volume root, in folders under the folder "WinFS" with names of GUIDs of these stores.”

WinFS was a drag on system performance and potentially had a bad programming model:

Boy, and you complained about Windows Vista. Imagine if Vista had included WinFS, Microsoft wouldn’t have had a chance against the forum haters. (Or, ironically, perhaps people may have actually accepted system performance slow down thinking it was worth it for this great new technology)

According to Dare Obasnjo; “The third thing I worry about is that the programming model will suck. An easy to use programming model often trumps almost any problem. Developers prefer building distributed applications using XML Web Services in .NET to the alternatives even though in some cases this choice leads to lower performance. The same developers would rather store information in the registry than come up with a robust alternative on their own because the programming model for the registry is fairly straightforward.”

Vista can do much of what WinFS was intended for:

From the WinFS development blog (2006: “The vision for a richer storage in Windows is very much alive.  With the new tools for searching and organizing information in Windows Vista, we are taking a good step towards that vision.”

Perhaps what is the most frustrating thing with WinFS is that Vista actually does include much of what WinFS was intended for but without the kind of disadvantages previously mentioned. It clearly doesn’t have WinFS, but most of what was relevant and useful for end users has been included. You’ll find much of those features present in the Windows Indexing and Search technologies.

The irony of this is that if consumers and developers have so far been so unwilling to utilise the current technologies of Vista than what does this say about their willingness to adopt something even more radical which would have been the result of WinFS?

As Paul Thurrott wrote some time ago about WinFS, “the big deal, of course, was desktop search, a capability that had always been part of the plan, but was being promoted because of the sudden rise in Internet-based searches.” This never changed through the Longhorn/Vista development and integrated searching is the single biggest improvement in Windows.

Other WinFS features included metadata sorting, filtering and indexing, virtual folders and shared data between applications. All these are essential aspects of WinFS and can be found in Vista. Here is one more detailed example of just how powerful some of the Vista search tools are. 

You can also take a look at Paul Thurrott’s Virtual Folders showcase here.

If I’m wrong about any of these statements, maybe even completely up the wrong tree then let me know!

Related posts

• Windows Longhorn Blog (0)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Windows Vista Editions – Do you know the differences ? (6)
• Windows 7 Wishlist (11)

I really can’t see Microsoft adding it into Windows itself, not even for Windows 7, so I’ll have to keep looking around for decent freeware alternatives.

The annoying thing is that as of yet, I haven’t really found any decent desktop managers which are simple, stable and perform well.

Today however, I found one which I really liked the look of on CodePlex.

Multiple Desktops for XP and Vista is a alpha quality desktop manager which you can try out here, but is pretty unusable right now. What I liked about it is the simplicity, ease-of-use and generally good design. Using the new Windows Vista live thumbnails it can give “give you a full screen preview of all of your desktops.”

At the moment however it’s slow and buggy, but I shall be keeping an eye on it for upcoming versions.

The full set of features includes:

• An infinite number of desktops only limited by the amount of memory in your computer
• A full screen desktop/window manager/switcher
• Live Vista thumbnails of all of your windows
• An alpha-blended indicator window to provide a visual indicator when you switch between desktops
• Hotkeys for up to 9 desktops using your numpad keys along with "send window to desktop" hotkeys
• A system tray icon to access a menu containing items for every desktop, no matter how many
• Multiple-monitor support
• Arrow key hotkeys
• One system tray icon per desktop (optional)
• Window-specific menus
• Sticky windows to exclude windows from the virtual desktop manager
• Per-desktop backgrounds
• XP support
• Thumbnail window tool
• Show all windows hotkey
• Show mini-preview at cursor hotkey
• Program rules for locking programs onto desktops
• Command line arguments for launching programs onto desktops, switching desktops, and showing the switcher

You can check it out here.

Related posts

• Triple Boot Vista, XP and Ubuntu (5)
• How to Repair the Vista Bootloader (8)
• XdN Tweaker for Windows (3)
• Vista vs. XP (15)
• Vista Part 3 (19)

Whenever a application requests a connection to the Internet that is not in the list of applications that have already defined firewall rulesets Vista Firewall Control asks the user if he wants to allow or deny that connection.

That’s a known feature from many desktop firewalls. The options are to configure the application to disable or enable all connections or to allow only incoming or outgoing connections.

The list of applications that already have a ruleset can be displayed and edited or deleted if necessary. The free version of Vista Firewall Control does have several limitations and it would probably be better to download and install a third party Firewall like Comodo instead.

Related posts

• Wallwatcher firewall and router analyzer (1)
• Send Windows to Nirvana with an animated cursor (1)
• Home Pc Firewall Guide (0)
• Astalavista Top 10 Freeware Tools (2)
• Zonealarm Pro Firewall 2010 Promotion (5)

The guide includes tips like disabling unneeded startup items, disabling unwanted services, disabling visual effects or to adjust search settings. That’s a basic set of tasks that most experienced users do after installing an operating system. It also means that experienced users will probably not find anything new in the guide that they do not already know about.

The Windows Vista Performance and Tuning Guide is therefor clearly aimed at computer users who do not have that experience but want a faster Windows Vista operating system. It’s definitely a very nice read with good instructions to guide the users through the changes that they can make.

If you have the time head over to Microsoft and download the 1.1 Megabyte guide.

Related posts

• Windows Vista SP1 WGA Changes (2)
• Windows Vista SP1 Refresh 2 is Vista SP1 RTM (0)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Windows Vista Services Explained (2)

Seeing might actually be the biggest problem in proving the point. Microsoft is very tight lipped about the experiment itself and the preview page that was up until earlier today mentioned a ten minute demonstration from a sales person on a 2 Gigabyte Intel Core Duo 2.2 Ghz HP computer.

Now that the website is up and running users can view short clips, really short ones from normal people who participated in the experiment. The website holds little information but at least a user breakdown. About 84% of the users are Windows XP users, 22% Apple OS users, 14% use other Microsoft Windows operating systems and 1% Linux. It seems that some users are accustomed to more than one operating system.

Some videos show that one person is actually demonstrating features of the “Mojave” operating system to the users, for example photo stitching that takes pictures and creates a panorama out of those photos.

That’s probably a very good way of getting the “wow” effect from people first by showing them nice features on fast hardware and then again by telling them that they did see Vista and not a super duper new Microsoft operating system.

It does however fail to cover important aspects of Vista criticism like that it is running extremely slow on older hardware even if the computer was purchased with Windows Vista or incompatibilities that still exist.

Related posts

• Windows Vista SP1 WGA Changes (2)
• Windows Vista SP1 Refresh 2 is Vista SP1 RTM (0)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Windows Vista SD Card Problem (26)

Now I realise that many of the things I said where good about Vista can be backported or substituted into XP. There are freeware alternatives to everything really, and Microsoft has allowed many things intended for Vista alone to be installed into Vista.

While this is true, I don’t think it makes for a killer argument on why we should stick with XP. As Thinker said:

“BTW, one thing to say: Many says, that all that stuff in Vista can be downloaded for XP too. I assure you, that when you try your to load all those application into XP it will work terribly slow. I checked it”

Okay, again, I know that depends on your set-up etc, but I’m thinking of this from the point of view of 90% of users across the world. Yes, personally I use Media Monkey instead of Windows Media Player, but most people will use the supplied applications.

Just imagine clean-installing Windows XP SP2.

Its good, its clean, its fast. But It’s also pretty dated in terms of a modern Operating System being 7 years old and all. That’s okay because you can of course give it all the functionality you want by installing additional software and updates.

If you really want to spend you time removing out of date software, updating new software, finding freeware etc then go for it. I’m guessing most people will not.

Paul Thurrott makes the strongest case I have seen for why XP is good, but not good enough:

“Aside from obvious look and feel issues, the most striking thing about downgrading from Windows Vista to XP is the sheer number of things that need to be installed and configured in order to bring the older OS up to speed with its more recent stablemate.”

Amongst these he describes the following:

• Hardware Drivers, XP is distinctly lacking
• Out of date software applications including MSN Explorer, Outlook Express, and Windows Messenger, IE6 and WMP9.
• Missing applications, such as all many new applications I mentioned yesterday
• Microsoft Update, a crappy web-based version. You’ll have to find and download the new Microsoft Update software.
• Start Menu, It likes to shuffle programs randomly. See if you like it after trying the Vista start menu.
• Hidden applications,
• ClearType, disabled by default in XP.
• Windows Search, download and install Windows Search or suffer with the default.
• Networking, Rarst mentioned XP having vastly improved networking making it worth upgrading. Vista has even more improved. “In XP, you have to enter the WPA network key TWICE to initially configure wireless networking. There are repeated "Now connected" pop-up balloons: Yeah, we get it, you’re connected. And then there are those annoying disconnected network adapter icons in the tray.” Oh well, I guess there are some handy registry hacks for that aren’t there? =P
• Power management, Manually enable the power management icon and hibernation
• Backup, XP has none of this
• User interface, dated, ugly and lurid.
• Disk Defrag, doesn’t happen automatically
• Hibernation and Sleep modes, good luck with getting these to work

“I know, I know. You’re looking at this list and you’re thinking big deal. Remember, however, that this isn’t a list of unique Vista features–a list that would include such technologies as BitLocker, Media Center, and Windows Calendar, among many others. This is a list of things that impact me, as an individual, on a regular basis. A list that should be combined with the list of issues from the previous section to provide a wider overall picture of the real world day to day differences between using each system. In this light, the advantages of Windows Vista are very real. Very real indeed.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I think it is easy to look at Vista and say, “so what?” but the reality is once you have actually become accustomed to using it, going back to XP feels like stepping into the 90s.

Related posts

• Triple Boot Vista, XP and Ubuntu (5)
• Things to check before switching to Vista Part 1 (1)
• Join The Windows Feedback Program and grab some free apps (3)
• XP Keep Per User Display Settings (1)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)

No I don’t want to make this too serious and I hope I don’t seem like I’m ranting, I just felt that since Rarst’s views are probably shared by a few of you we could open up the discussion even more.

“In my opinion Vista has bad reputation for a number of reasons… And they better fix those reasons, not reputation”

I think that Microsoft has fairly clearly been doing this, by first spending 2 years working on Vista fixes, compatibility issues with partners and finally releasing SP1 this year. Now it’s time to work on reputation, which brings us back to the new Microsoft campaign.

“[Vista] IS slower. It can’t be faster by design. All people saying it is faster are either comparing it to really crappy XP install or are using self-hypnosis.”

I really think this is purely a perceptional thing now. There are plenty of third party tests which have grudgingly shown Vista to be equal or superior to XP on identical hardware. This can only improve with time as well. Here is Ed Bott’s view:

“If you bought a bottom-of-the-line, loss leader system in 2004, you may find it unacceptably slow. But any mainstream system purchased after early 2004 should be just fine with Windows Vista.”

“Tons of internal DRM crap that slows some critical tasks like file copying to a crawl.
Crappy performance on notebooks (on normal notebooks, not upper-class that pack more hardware than average desktop). High system requirements (if it could work on XP-level hardware adoption process could be way more smooth)…”

I’m pretty sure these are some of those Vista myths that where circulating around a year or so ago. You know that DRM is completely optional right? And I have personally encountered it only twice in 7 months. While Vista did require higher system requirements when it came out, so did Windows 95 AND Windows XP. A few years later and the hardware has caught up, everyone’s forgotten about it and we’re ready to complain over the next resource-hogging eye candy OS.

Btw on the DRM thing again, again, Ed says:

“Much of the DRM code in Windows Vista is a a straightforward upgrade of the infrastructure introduced in Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10.”

“I keep hearing complains that Vista puts priority on internal tasks and freezes user out (especially on relatively underpowered stuff like notebooks). It is supposed to work in idle, doesn’t mean it always does. And some stuff like DRM crap runs realtime by definition”

Vista does put programs into non-responsive mode far more rapidly then XP, but it also recovers from this significantly better. I rarely ever have whole system crashes like I did with XP.

“I am not Vista hater for the sake of it. But I am greatly disappointed with it. It is boring upgrade stuffed with crappy features, slower and with higher system requirements. Not something I want to replace my XP with”

I understand upgrading to Vista may not seem worth it, but if you are purchasing a new computer what possible reason could you have for not simply getting the vastly superior OS? I also think this shows a little lack of foresight as Vista provided the necessary architectural changes to create far greater Windows versions in the future. Increasingly we are seeing Longhorn concepts being incorporated back into Windows.

Rarst also requested some specific examples of Vista’s improvements over XP, here is what I can think of off the top of my head:

• Streamlined and improved start menu including Windows Search
• Integrated search in Windows Explorer
• Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Media Center
• New and improved applications including:
  • Windows Mail
  • Windows Photo Gallery
  • Snipping Tool
  • Media Encoder
  • Windows Calendar
  • Movie Maker
  • DVD Maker
  • Internet Explorer 7
  • Windows Contacts
  • Windows Meeting Space
  • Windows Defender
• Windows Aero of course, and some improved customizations options
• Security improvements:
  • Windows Defender
    • Start-up blocker
  • Windows Firewall
  • UAC (perhaps a little over the top, but still a good thing!)
• Improved Control Panel navigation
• New Parental controls including
  • Account permissions (blocking specific programs)
  • Time tracking, limits and reports
  • Games rating controls
• Administration and troubleshooting Tools
  • Error tracking and reporting
  • Event log
  • Reliability and Performance monitor
  • System health report
• System maintenance tools
  • Regular Background defragmenting
  • File backup and restore
  • Improved Hard Drive partitioning
• Improved audio, now individual programs can be adjusted, for example low volume system sounds and high volume media player
• ReadyBoost
• Improved sharing capabilities
• Improved wireless connection (I’ve been seeing XP users have far more trouble connecting to Wireless then I ever have)
• Better performance management for laptops

And that’s about enough for now.

Vista is certainly not perfect, there are still plenty of annoying things, but it definitely is an improvement over XP. Some things I cannot forgive with Vista however include painfully slow right click context menus, the locking of files so they cannot be deleted and the removal of the progress bar in the defragmenter. Thanks to Rarst himself I discovered Unlocker which can fix the deletion problem, so thanks! =P

Related posts

• XdN Tweaker for Windows (3)
• Vista Part 3 (19)
• Virtual Memory too low (5)
• Triple Boot Vista, XP and Ubuntu (5)
• Things to check before switching to Vista Part 1 (1)

Understandably of course, there where a lot of serious issues with Vista’s release, nothing we hadn’t seen before, but issues nonetheless. It’s safe to say that 2 years later these issues have been resolved and as Tim Anderson declared:

“Vista is now actually better than its reputation. That’s a marketing issue.”

Thanks to the infamous, largely inaccurate yet brilliant “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” advertisements Apple managed to walk all over Microsoft and contribute to what may be a permanent tarring of the Vista image.

Several months ago however there was the announcement that Microsoft had sold its latest $300 million advertising campaign to a _____  company

This month however we have began to see the launch of what we can only presume to be the new Microsoft campaign aimed at removing that anti-Vista stigma. The Microsoft website has been completely redesigned, removing the Aero inspired elements and replacing it with a lighter look, attractive and well designed. The design manages to say ‘Microsoft Windows’ without saying ‘Vista’ which is what I imagine the intention to be.

The most interesting thing on the front page is the banner advertisement declaring

“at one point, everyone thought the earth was flat”

Which I think is very good start and gives me a little more confidence in the Windows campaign. It’s clever and unique and gets the message across without being corny or seeming to compete with the Apple ads in any way.

The website the banner leads to is also well designed and provides a whole lot of easy to read and understand information about Vista. The only thing I still don’t think is being sold well about Vista is some good solid reasons for upgrading. The list given is quite short and really a lot more could be said, but I guess I’m not running a multi-billion dollar company here so they probably know best.

Related posts

• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Windows Vista Editions – Do you know the differences ? (6)
• Windows Longhorn Blog (0)
• Will Microsoft ever learn ? (3)

Windows Vista users can either see the old five locations on the left side of Windows Explorer if an application makes a call to the function of the old Api which was left in for backwards compatibility or something that is called Favorite Links which provides access to way more folders and resources.

A location on the hard drive is being used to store shortcuts to all folders and special folders that are shown in the Favorite Links panel. That location is by default C:/Users/username/Links. It can vary depending on your setup.

The easiest way however to add links to the Favorite Links is by dragging and dropping them right into the Windows Explorer window. Another possibility would be to open the location on the hard drive and drag and drop shortcuts into it. You can naturally remove any shortcut in the folder to remove the link from the Favorite Links panel.

That panel can be deactivates as well. If you do not need the Favorite Links panel and prefer a full screen Windows Explorer view without a side panel you can deactivate it by pressing the Organize button and choosing Layout > Navigation Panel from the menu.

Related posts

• Windows Vista Multi-User Language Interface Hacker (8)
• Windows Vista Shrink Volume Problems (5)
• How To Quickly Open Folders In Windows (18)
• Fix Windows Vista Resetting Folder View Settings (4)
• Fix for poor network performance in Windows Vista (2)

Previously I had used a whole combination of toolbars and application launchers so it was a welcome change to remove some of this clutter.

One of the notable alternatives to pop up was the Vista Start Menu, a replacement for both the XP and Vista menus. Developer Dennis Nazarenko created it becuase he says:

“I have always found the Start Menu in Windows to be inconvenient to use. In the new Windows Vista it’s been made more attractive but more inconvenient than even before!”

His replacement is definitely a more useful option for XP but I would never recommend using it in Vista, it would be somewhat of a step backwards.

In fact you can actually get the Vista Start Menu in XP, thanks to the Vista Start Menu Emulator by Folgelsoft. It is a completely accurate version of the Vista start menu for XP, and I think it’s very impressive. In fact I on my XP computer I love using this application as it functions almost identically to the real thing and is a dead ringer looks-wise.

The performance is also impressive, no lag or slow down compared to the default menu and it loads very fast on the initial login. The integrated search is almost instant, and better in some ways then Vista, but that’s becuase the VSME only searches the shortcuts within the menu itself. Vista indexes the entire system.

So if you want to give the new start menu a try without upgrading then this is how you can do it. Admittedly it looks a bit funny when used with the Luna theme as it’s black and transparent, but you can always skin your desktop to match.

Related posts

• Pimp up the Vista startmenu (0)
• WinFS, Was it Really so Good? (1)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Windows Vista Editions – Do you know the differences ? (6)

1) Stop UAC being so annoying

Yes, I leave User Account Control on. I find it bearable with time and its just one extra security caution. However the most annoying thing about it for me is not the popup requiring you to proceed, but the way it blocks out the rest of the desktop.

With time I found it begins to slow down and become increasingly frustrating. Luckily it’s easy to fix:

• Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
  Policies\System\PromptOnSecureDesktop
• Change from 1 to 0

2) Auto Logon

Maybe not so secure a tip, but seeing as I have to reset Windows so often I wish sometimes it could just logon automatically so I could go off and do something else. This is a registry tweak to do jut that:

• Registry Key: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\winlogon\AutoAdminLogon
• Now create a new String Value and call it DefaultPassword
  Set: DefaultPassword = "P@ssw0rd"
• Check for a REG_SZ called DefaultUserName. If it’s not there, then right-click in the right pane > New > REG_SZ and name it, DefaultUserName.  Set the string value to the required UserName to be auto logged in.

3) Simultaneous Downloads

This is a fantastic little tweak as I’ve run into trouble with this before… by default you cannot download more then 2 files from one web server.

• Registry Key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings
• Create two DWORDS (Right Click > New> DWORD (32-Bit) Value)
• MaxConnectionsPerServer and MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server
• Set the value of the first to 000000a and the value of the second to 0000000a

Related posts

• Pin Folders to the start menu (0)
• XdN Tweaker for Windows (3)
• WinFS, Was it Really so Good? (1)
• Windows Vista Taskbar Resize (1)
• Windows Vista SP1 WGA Changes (2)

However I just discovered a very interesting blog today called UX.Unleaked which has been providing regular dialogues over the past month on the many builds and developments of the codenamed Windows Longhorn.

I have no idea what the credentials of the author are, but he has a lot of knowledge and insight into the history and development process of Microsoft. In fact he has a number of previously unseen builds on his blog and offers an in-depth commentary.

Longhorn was to contain every revolutionary technology Microsoft had envisioned for the next decade including the much spoken of WinFX. It’s been well documented that eventually Longhorn collapsed under it’s complexity and Vista was created instead using Server 2003 as a base almost completely from scratch in just 2 years.

It was a costly management mistake that has seen a dive in public perceptions and an ongoing struggle for Microsoft to hold a position of similar influence as it did at the beginning of the decade.

Although it was never completed Longhorn was not discarded. Many of the features and code inspired various Vista technologies and have been incorporated into Server 2008 and the upcoming Windows 7.

Looking through the various past builds of Longhorn can give an insight into both the development process and possibly what we can expect from future Microsoft operating systems.

Related posts

• WinFS, Was it Really so Good? (1)
• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Windows Vista Editions – Do you know the differences ? (6)
• Will Microsoft ever learn ? (3)

After checking out all the online tech websites I followed all the tweaking tips such as disabling background services, turning of animations and visual effects, using the Vista Power Saver application and various ‘speed-up-windows’ programs.

Since then I have reinstalled a couple of times and discovered that all these tips are essentially useless on a decent, fairly new computer.

I could notice no performance improvement at all with all visual themes enabled then with them disabled and I got near identical battery life with aero on as I did off. I’m going to call this as complete bollocks:

>

This tiny program will save up to 70% of your battery by disabling those nice, but greedy Vista features. Running in task bar with private workset of 5.5M and 0% CPU it will do all work for you, by enabling and disabling customizable features when power source changed or battery power fall under certain percent.

All you need is the advanced Vista Power Options and you can save a lot more battery power. As far as disabling background services go I will simply echo Ed Bott’s advice:

That is breathtakingly bad advice. It is as if the automotive columnist in your local newspaper told you to open the hood of your car and start disconnecting wires and hoses one at a time to see which ones made your car run faster or quieter or smoother. It might be hours or days or even weeks before you run a program that requires the service you disabled, at which point you might have no clue that the disabled service is the cause of the nonfunctional program.

Here’s the reality: On an otherwise healthy PC running Windows Vista, disabling most built-in Windows services is extremely unlikely to have any noticeable effect on memory usage, startup or shutdown time, or system performance. On the contrary, you are more likely to create problems by disabling services. Not to mention the amount of time you will surely waste and the productivity you will lose with all that starting and stopping and rebooting and web searching.

Any services which are causing significant slow downs on your computer are likely to originate from a third-party source such as Nero’s background indexing. Windows Defender may also cause some slowdown with it’s daily scan.

And lastly the system tweaks, many of these will make some small improvements, but they largely apply to specific actions and are not connected to overall performance itself.

What is your opinion on this? Am I wrong? Did these things make a difference to the performance of Vista on your computer?

Related posts

• Windows Vista SP1 Download (12)
• Windows Vista SP1 breaks applications (2)
• Watch three webcasts get vista and office for free (1)
• Vista to automatically revoke activation ? (4)
• Things to check before switching to Vista Part 1 (1)