AdventuresInVista
Hints, Tips & Tricks for Microsoft Windows Vista

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!

Tuesday Tweak - Change your MTU
11 March 2008 in Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (2)

MTU (or ‘Maximum Transfer Unit’) is used by all networks to limit the amount of bytes in a packet. Normally, this is set to 1500 bytes… but there are some networks that just dare to be arkward.

My service provider - AOL - is one such case.

AOL (in the UK at least) require an MTU setting of 1400. If you use the AOL software, this stuff is handled for you. But if, like me, you’ve set everything up manually, you’ll need to change the MTU setting on both your router and all your computers.

Tuesday Tweak - Stop Vista pinching your bandwidth!
20 February 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (1)

By default, both Windows XP and Windows Vista like to reserve some of your internet bandwidth for themselves. The idea is that the operating system can carry on doing stuff in the background (downloading updates, etc), while you enjoy a fast, responsive, internet experience.

That’s all well and good, but by default it reserves a whopping 20 percent!!!

The good news is that you can control the amount reserved, and even set it to 0, by following these simple steps…

Tuesday Tweak - Faster boot-up on a dual-boot installation
29 January 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (0)

Does your PC have a boot menu on startup? Perhaps because you’ve got Windows XP and Windows Vista installed side-by-side?

You can speed up your startup by shortening the length of time the boot menu appears, as follows…

Tuesday Tweak - Password Free Logon
22 January 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (0)

If you’re the only user of your PC, having to enter your password each time you logon can be a bit of a pain. The good news is this can be fixed!

Tuesday Tweak - Adjust your font size!
15 January 2008 in Help & Tips & Tuesday Tweaks | Comments (0)

I’ve decided to start a couple of regular slots here on AdventuresInVista to group together posts of a similar nature, and provide short sharp tips.

The first of these is the ‘Tuesday Tweaks’ series - every Tuesday I’ll post a little trick or tweak to improve your Vista experience.

This week, I’m going to show you how to increase the fonts size in Windows Vista - great if you find some of text hard to read.