AdventuresInVista
Hints, Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Windows Vista

Welcome Center
22 February 2007 in General & Screens + Vids | Comments (0)

Whenever you logon to Vista, you’re presented with the Welcome Center…

This is much like any other Welcome screen, allowing you quick access to certain tasks Microsoft think you’ll need. It’s quite useful the first time you run Vista, allowing you to quickly connect to the internet, add new users, transfer files and settings, etc. There’s also links to Windows MarketPlace, Windows Live, and various other Microsoft resources.

Luckily, you can stop it running each time you logon!

Windows DreamScene - a Vista Ultimate Extra
21 February 2007 in Multimedia & Screens + Vids | Comments (1)

Last night I downloaded Windows DreamScene - a free download from Microsoft available from Windows Ultimate Extras (Start > Control Panel > Windows Update).

DreamScene is a desktop enhancement available for users of Windows Vista Ultimate, which - assuming you can run Aero - allows you to run full motion video as your Desktop Background.

It’s merely a bit of a frivolity - but it also looks kinda cool, as you can see from this video posted on YouTube…

It is however quite power hungry - on my 1.83ghz laptop with 1gig of RAM, running a DreamScene desktop uses about 30-40% of my CPU when not running any software. That’s a lot just to have a moving desktop. Having said that… it does depend on the background video being shown.

For more information on DreamScene, visit WindowsUltimate.com.

It’s an interesting enhancement, and it’s free! Worth a look - the question is… how useful is it?!

The All New Start Menu
20 February 2007 in General & Screens + Vids | Comments (1)

Windows Vista has an all new Start Menu. Well, almost new. It certainly looks a lot cooler (like most things in Vista it’s semi-transparent), but it also works differently, too.

The first you’ll notice is that MS have finally got rid of the stupid My prefix, so on the right hand side you now have “Computer”, “Documents”, etc. Far more sensible if you ask me. I never could quite work out why my my computer was talking to me as though it was my head?

As well as all the old right-hand side items, we now have a “Default Programs” item. This is quite a useful feature (I’ll cover it in more depth later), but in essence it allows you to change things like the default program used when you double click on a file, what happens when you insert a CD, etc.

The left hand column is again taken up with your Frequently Used Programs, and the good news is you can have a lot more now.

All Programs now opens in the left column with a scrollable list within the Start Menu, with a Back link to return to your Frequently Used list. This new system takes a bit of getting used to, and to be honest I find it easier to use the ‘Start Search’ facility. Click the Windows logo, and start typing. It searches everything… programs, documents, links, favourites.

Is it an improvement? Well, I think so. Let me know what you think in the comments.

So, what does it look like?
19 February 2007 in General & Screens + Vids | Comments (0)

Apparently I need to add some images to AdventuresInVista. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been told. So, here is a lovely picture of my Windows Vista desktop…

Click here to view larger version

Doesn’t it look lovely? First of all, we have the new Start button, which doesn’t say Start anymore - its just a big Windows logo.

Then we have the Windows Sidebar on the right. As you can see I’ve loaded it full of useful gadgets (it’s completely customisable), and in a dual-monitor setup you can move it to the second monitor out the way. You can see one “gadget” which just says “Service not available”. This is actually a stock quotes gadget, but I wasn’t connected to the net when I took the screenshot.

Finally, we have the Welcome Center. This pops up everytime you turn your PC on (until you switch it off) and gives you a brief overview of your system setup, plus links to some vaguely useful features.

There’s plenty of other improvements, which I’ll be discussing in future posts - stay tuned!