AdventuresInVista
Hints, Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Windows Vista

Test Post
18 July 2008 in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Just a quick test post… apparently email subscribers are receiving blank emails from Feedburner. I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to those loyal followers, and let you know I’m working on this as we speak…

Free Vista Ultimate Helpful Hints PDF from Microsoft
17 July 2008 in Help & Tips & vista ultimate | Comments (0)

Microsoft recently released a Windows Vista Ultimate Helpful Hints PDF, free of charge! According to the cover, it’s…

Your guide to mastering the Windows Vista Ultimate operating system

Personally, it feels more akin to the sort of flimsy manual you might have got with Windows 95, giving you vague information on lots of things you’ll probably end up not using.

Still, worth a read if you’re new to Vista Ultimate. You can download it free of charge here.

Tuesday Tweak - Vista Battery Saver
15 July 2008 in Maintenance & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (0)

So, you’ve downloaded the Vista Battery Tracker, and now you’re thinking “I wonder if I can get any more juice out of my battery?”. Well, thanks to this tip from my friend Dave, I have a peice of software which could save up to 70% of your battery usage.

The Vista Battery Saver (download here) claims it can do this by “disabling those nice but greedy Vista features” - things like the Aero interface, for example.

Here it is in action…

You could probably achieve the same performance enhancements manually, but this small download gives you a quick and easy interface to tweak your battery usage.

UPDATE Thanks to Dave Webb, who mentioned this in a comment on yesterday’s post, ‘Vista Battery Checker‘. Coincidence, eh?

Download Vista Battery Saver now!

Vista Battery Tracker
14 July 2008 in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Thanks to Milo over at Windows Vista Weblog for mentioning this great little battery checker utility for Windows Vista…

If you need detailed battery information (such as manufacturer, model, and even your battery quality) then this handy peice of software should be top of your list.

Download the Vista Battery Tracker here or Save up to 70% of your battery life

Sidebar Sunday - Downloading Sidebar Gadgets
13 July 2008 in Help & Tips & Sidebar Sunday | Comments (0)

In response to some email conversations regarding the Windows Vista Sidebar and it’s possible uses, I’ve decided to launch a new regular feature here on AdventuresInVista called “Sidebar Sunday”.

The idea is simple - to give you a heads up on some of the latest and most useful gadgets for your Vista Sidebar, available across the web.

This week, I thought I’d give a brief introduction to downloading and installing Sidebar gadgets from the Windows Live Gallery. Continue reading…

Download FF3 and help set a Guiness World Record!
17 June 2008 in General | Comments (0)

If you prefer the Firefox browser to IE (I don’t, but there you go), you might be interested to know that the Mozilla Foundation has today released the final build of Firefox 3 for Windows, MacOS X and Linux.

Apparently, they are trying to break the Guiness World Record for the number of downloads in a 24hr period, so you may want to go download it and contribute to the record attempt.

There’s also an official FF3 launch party in New York, which you may wish to attend. More details courtesy of A VC.

What are you waiting for? Download Firefox 3 now! Better still, why not Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1?

Renewed sense of Vista-ness!
16 June 2008 in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Hey everyone,

Well I haven’t been very good at keeping you up to date with all things Vista recently have I? Shame on me!

Please accept my apologies, and be aware that I have great plans for AdventuresInVista over the coming months, including many tweaks to the blog and design, and loads and loads of great articles to show you how to get the most from Microsoft’s flagship operating system.

Hope you stick along for the journey!

RSS regeneration
12 April 2008 in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Quick apology - seems my RSS feed regenerated itself when I moved the site to the new server. In my case, this resulted in me receiving the last 5 posts again. Doh!

Apologies folks!

Moved and Upgraded
12 April 2008 in General | Comments (0)

I’ve finally managed to find some time to move some more of my sites across to the new server. You can follow my progress over at GoDHN.com, but I just wanted to let you all know that AiV was moved yesterday. Hopefully there wasn’t too much downtime!

There’s still a couple of things to check (plugins, feeds working ok, etc), but everything LOOKS fine.

I also took the opportunity to upgrade to Wordpress 2.5 - love the new Admin system, and actually… it all seems a bit quicker!

Please let me know if you spot anything untoward with AiV!

How Cool is Messenger 8.5?
22 March 2008 in General | Comments (0)

I’ve just downloaded Live Messenger 8.5 onto one of my Vista installations, and I gotta say… I love it!

It’s not a whole lot different, but everything just feels a bit sleeker and more refined. For example, here’s the main contacts screen…

Continue reading…