VISTA HOSTILITY

The hostility toward Vista is almost palpable now. Support representatives sigh deeply when customers say they’re running Vista. Computer magazines and tech web sites proudly trash it as the worst product of the year. The word of mouth that I overhear is...

HOW BIG IS THE REGISTRY?

Many of you have been exposed to the registry in Windows XP, the database that holds all of the information, settings, and options for the computer hardware, the Windows OS, and most programs. It can be manually edited using REGEDIT.EXE or REGEDT32.EXE and there are...

UNPLUGGING PLUGINS

We’ve become familiar with the slowdowns and crashes associated with programs and services that start up automatically when a computer is turned on. Now I’m running into problems caused by the links between programs – the “add-ins” or...

COMPUTER SHOPPING 2007

Thinking about a new computer – home, home office, small business? Let me give you some generalizations that will help you get started. (As always, gamers will be looking for faster processors and hard drives, more memory, and – particularly important...

VISTA FEATURE: DREAMSCENE & DESKSCAPES

Vista Ultimate includes “Dreamscene” as an optional extra installed through the Windows Update system. It’s a completely frivolous bit of eye candy that animates your desktop – instead of a pretty picture of a waterfall, your desktop can...

VISTA FEATURE: READYBOOST

Here’s another Vista feature worth knowing about.To perform well, Vista requires 2Gb of system memory. That’s partially because Vista is more demanding than Windows XP but it’s also because we’re all running more programs simultaneously as the...