Windows Vista Beta 2 public release

[DonnyEMU]

Some tips for people using Vista for the first time.

1) If you are in IE 7 or media player and you cannot find a menu item that you are used to finding try hitting the "ALT" key. You will find those classic menus that you remember and know inside the application.

2) If you are having problems with x64 and getting your drivers installed hit F8 as you boot to disable the driver signing security measure (or use the BCDEdit tool). This won't be available on the final release as signed drivers will be required from what they are saying.

3) look for the words "FOLDERS" in the GUI if you wanna see the old tree view for folders..

4) USB thumb drives have a new caching option, be sure you are doing the "safe removal" procedure if you have that caching option enabled..

5) if you miss the run command on the star menu don't forget the short cut it's still there (WinKey + R)

6) if you miss seeing "my computer" and various icons on the desktop, you can still put them there, just find them on the start menu and right click on them and on the pop up menu select "show on desktop".

7) the backup and restore center now lets you create a burnable disk image  (CompletePC) backup of your entire hard drive (like ghost or driveImage) take advantage of this to make a good back up of your hard disk.

Windows media player now includes built-in networking, so you can thru Universal plug n play to share your songs directly in media player with every other PC on your network in the house by streaming it. This really rocks because your big computer can become a jukebox for every other PC (a media server).

9) Windows Calendar is compatible with iCal so you can share your calendars with your mac friends..

10) Make sure internet protected mode check box is turned on in all "ZONES" unless you totally know for sure you can trust everything you mark as a "trusted" site.. In internet options.

11) Don't use bitlocker if you have multiple partitions and you want to be able to see all partitions..

12) Use the performance and rating tools, they'll identify slow loading problems and driver issues.

13) check out performance and rating tools as they will tell you how to improve your performance.

14) In control panel/Advanced tools/Open windows diagnostic console there is are two options a performance monitor AND a RELIABILITY monitor. This tool rocks, it will tell you how stable your system is and what's having problems..  It charts software and driver installs, Application Failures, Hardware Failures, Windows Failures and even Miscellaneous failures.

If you want to learn why your system is having problems or what's causing the problem and how to fix it, going there will tell you a lot about your system and chart when things started going downhill, giving you a clue about how to fix things or at least back yourself out of problems..

15) The CLIPPING TOOL is sweet! it lets you snapshot the screen or any area of it and either copy as graphics and text or a Jpeg or PNG. If you take something out of a web page it also notes the URL and appropriate references and paste into any app..

Please note this is the first version of Windows and integrates specialized graphics processors aka GPUs..The desktop is fully integrated with DirectX and if you have an older machine please be sure that you have a machine that really supports its features.

The desktop has something called "Flip3D" which lets you shuffle windows like cards and supports resolutions and pixels DPIs higher than 96 DPI.. The entire desktop has been redesigned around vector graphics support to support the coming higher resolution displays. In a couple of years we will start seeing like 300 pixel per inch dense monitors and windows already supports this. So if you are wondering why all of the non stoneage graphics, this is why.

Also when you play with the new windows movie maker and it's GPU assisted rendering of transitions and FX you will be glad it's there. The DVD maker program is pretty cool too..

If you want to check out what people are already using vista's updated graphics for check out:

http://www.seewindowsvista.com

If you want to see a 200DPI LCD monitor that supports these kinds of graphics check out extreme tech's review here.. The resolution's only around 9 million pixels (or 3840x2400 pixels)

ExtremeTech's 200 DPI monitor review (only 8G)

[DonnyEMU]

A lot of people are complaining about user account control. In my experience it's best to turn it off when you are installing stuff., but leave it on during normal machine operation. But when it's on nothing can touch your system. It's saved my butt from a number of spyware programs and even one worm.

Yes it's annoying but that same request for admin priviledges comes up on the latest MacOS (maybe not as often) if you try to install or make machine changes.

If you look for the SECURITY center shield symbol by any option you click on you can expect those annoying dialogs to pop up. A good rule of thumb is just to know that permission will be granted if you see the shield on any buttons or dialogs.

There used to be another way to turn off user account control the method was:

Toggle User Account Control (On/Off)

Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
Click “System and Maintenance”
Scroll down and click “Administrative Tools”.
Double click on “System Configuration”.
If prompted to launch the System Configuration Utility, click “Continue”.
In the System Configuration window, click on the “Tools” tab.
Select either “Disable UAP” or “Enable UAP” from the list and click Launch.
You will need to restart the computer for this to take effect.

I am not sure that exists in this build or not..


Another tip of you want to try Windows Calendar with your google online calendar instructions can be found here:

http://blog.shawnlmorrissey.com/archives/2006/04/subscribe_to_a.html

[DonnyEMU]

>You still have the back, forward, address bar and search >bar, but there's no "up" like before. But that's not >really missing as they've improved the address bar.

>The address bar now looks like:

> Computer > Local Disk (C:) > Windows >

>The arrows are clickable and give you relative folders to >what the arrow is for.


Have you tried double clicking on the bar inside of it? you will notice you can still type or paste a path into it.. also if you are missing classic menus hit the alt key (make sure the application has focus with your mouse).

-Don