One of my colleague mentioned he didn’t like ClearType in the new IE7, the same ClearType that’s on by default in Vista. I don’t mind it myself, but if you find it to be ‘blurry’, or just don’t want it on, you can disable it. (more…)

I‘ve seen mentioned in a few places that applications that use multiple network threads (BitTorrent clients, download managers, etc) don’t download files as quickly in Vista as they do in Windows XP. Most seem to attribute the difference to the new AutoTuning function in the TCP/IP stack. (more…)

If you hate waiting for Vista to load when you start your computer, hibernation is one way to significantly speed up boot. It basically copies your memory to disk and then shuts down. When you start the computer again, it just loads your RAM from disk, and you’re up and running where you left off previously. The downside of this is that a file must be created on your hard drive to hold this memory, and the file will be as large as the amount of RAM you have. On my computer that’s 2GB, and if you’ve got 4GB of RAM, well, you do the math! If you don’t use hibernate, you can turn it off and save yourself this disk space. (more…)

I‘ve mentioned previously how to remove the Recycle Bin from your desktop, and how to restore it. Now lets take a look a bit further into how the Recycle Bin works, and at some of the ways you can reconfigure how it behaves. (more…)

So you lost your Recycle Bin icon. Maybe you deleted it on purpose, as I showed in our last tip, or maybe you don’t know how it disappeared. Assuming you didn’t turn off all your desktop icons (right-click your desktop, choose View from the menu, and choose Show Desktop Icons if it doesn’t have a check next to it, which will turn them back on), it’s easy to get back, so stop your sweating and follow these simple steps. (more…)

Some people don’t like any icons on their desktop. If this is you, simply right-click your desktop, choose View from the menu, and choose Show Desktop Icons, which will turn them off if they are currently on. Other people don’t mind the icons, they just would prefer not to have the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop. In that case, here’s how to turn it off: (more…)

Internet time servers have been around for a while to help synchronize computer clocks. For most of us, this isn’t a critical need, but occasionally having your computer at the correct time could be important. There have been utilities around for as long as there have been time servers that will synchronize your computer with the servers. In Windows XP, they built this function in (though I never even noticed it), and it’s built into Vista as well. (more…)

Our previous tip showed how to add a checkbox next to all of your files. Today’s tip allows you to add much, much more. When you view your files by ‘Details’ in Explorer, Vista has default columns of information that it shows, depending on the folder you are looking at. When I open my Documents folder, I see Name, Date modified, Type, Size, and Tags. My Pictures folder has Ratings instead of Type, and Date taken instead of Date modified. You’ll find differences in many of the other folders you open as well, as Vista tries to show you information related to the type of content you have in a folder. But what if Vista isn’t showing you what you want to see? (more…)

Vista has a number of interesting hidden features. Snowball - The Blog points out one of them, being able to add check boxes to items in the explorer. This gives another option for selecting multiple items (instead of using the CTRL or SHIFT keys). (more…)

When you work in IT, you’re usually not just just dealing with data files. I need to work with application files, system files, profile files, etc. every day. By default, Vista, like XP before it, hides many of those files. One of the first things I do when I setup a machine that I’ll be working on is ‘unhide’ all of the files (and the extensions on the filenames). (more…)