So I have noticed the other day that Windows Explorter in Vista wasn’t showing file sizes or dates, it was showing me a rating scheme and artist and song title.

Turns out that if you have a folder with MP3’s in it, Vista has a special filter that will display the folder differently, the thing is that sometimes it gets applied to folders that you don’t want it to.

Quick search turned up a simple solution to Vista Explorer folders view.

Vista search index seems to take up all the CPU and system resources it can. This can really slow the machine down and is probably the number 1 reason people think Visa is slow.
What do you need to do: Disable Search Index in Vista.

Do you run a mulit-monitor setup? If so Display Fusion can help you out with backgrounds.

It allows you to have a custom background for each monitor, lots of great options, Vista and XP.

Need some awesome backgrounds to go with it? Check out Interfacelift for some amazing high resolution backgrounds.

So the Vista Welcome screen that you logon to is pretty boring and of course Microsoft won’t let you change it.

Along comes LogonStudio to the rescue for Vista and XP. You can create a new logon screen from any image.

It also allows you to download pre made logon screens.

So I have been running Vista for a while and finally decide to get around to installing the Palm Desktop software.

I go to run it and it stays at the splash screen forever.

What is the problem? Turns out you need to have UAC enabled in Vista for Palm Desktop to work. This is just dumb, dumb and more dumb.

Have found a program called Tweak UAC which allows UAC to run in ‘quiet mode‘ where UAC is on but it doesn’t prompt you if your account is an administrator account.

Only 1 thing left, the Palm Quick Install app won’t run, so you can’t install anything new onto your Palm.

Palm used to be the best, its things like this that are really letting them down.

So Vista doesn’t seem to remember my network share passwords between reboots. I turned of UAC, so this might be the source of my problem.

Here is the Fix:

• Click on the start button, type ‘User Accounts’, and press Enter.
• Click ‘Manage your network passwords’ on the left side menu.
• Select ‘Add’ to add a server.
• In the ‘Log on to’ field, just type the server name, not the share and not \\ or anything else.
• Fill out the User name and Passwod then click OK.

Vista will now remember your network password between reboots.

Do you use RDP in Vista to connect to a 2003 or XP RDP server? Then you probably want to know about how to disable the security warning on RDP connect.

I also found out you can enable ALT+TAB in the RDP session when it isn’t maximised by enabling it in the Local Resources tab.

Ok, so I think its time to try my hand at Windows Vista while I have access to a spare laptop for the next couple of weeks. I am only installing 32bit Vista as the Dell D620 doesn’t support 64bit.

Will collect my notes and thoughts here on what I learn.

First Impressions:

• Installs way better than XP.
• The new user interface is a breath of fresh air, does a lot of things that have been missing from XP.
• Some things are different so don’t assume anything about any file locations or settings.
• UAC - User Account Control, disable this as soon as you can. Its the annoying quesitions about how your mouse has moved and do you want to allow this to happen, just in case someone has hacked your machine.

Links I have needed so far:

How to migrate Firefox from XP to Vista.

Replacing Notepad - I like to use Metapad instead

UltraVNC Addons -?? Make sure to follow the instructions on how to setup VNC to work under Vista.

Handy Sidebar Widgets - The default sidebar widgets are pretty useless.

Overall:

I would say I am impressed, simple things like how double clicking on the clock in the systray works now really show that XP is getting old. It’s the nice little touches that make Vista a pleasure to use, once I have figured out all the different ways some things are done, I think it will be a good move. So far no show stoppers.