Toggle Vista's Aero Effects with a Right-Click [Windows Vista Tip] (15)
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Kevin Purdy (1425)
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Lifehacker (5186)
1 month, 1 week
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Windows Vista's Aero looks and effects are generally nice to look at, but when you're trying to squeeze the last bit of power and life out of a battery, or just running some memory-hungry stuff, you don't always need them. Windows Vista Magazine details a registry hack you can make to add "Aero On" and "Aero Off" shortcuts to your desktop right-click menu, making it simple and quick to toggle the fancier stuff (it's the ...
Search Internet Explorer Favorites in Vista with a Shortcut [Windows Vista Tip] (4)
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Kevin Purdy (1425)
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1 month, 2 weeks
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If you've stored a good number of bookmarks (or, in Windows terms, "Favorites") in Internet Explorer and need quick access to them, the How-To Geek has you covered, at least in Windows Vista. By creating a simple saved search and creating a shortcut to it (so you or a launcher like Launchy can get at it), you'll have quick, search-able access to all your bookmarks. Anybody know a similarly simple method to searching favorites in ...
How To: Turn Vista Home Premium into Ultimate with Free Software (48)
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Kevin Purdy (1425)
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The Mysticgeek blog at the How-To Geek's site has a clever series of posts up that use free software tools to give Windows Vista Home Premium—the version that most often ships with standard laptops—the same kind of super-user powers you get with a copy of Ultimate. Mysticgeek uses FileHamster to replicate Ultimate's "Shadow Copy" function, installing a DreamScene power toy to get moving backgrounds, and DriveIMage XML to create sturdy backups (as Gina has already ...
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Bill said:
or you could always just install Ubuntu :P
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vanlandw said:
I hate linking to Lifehacker but this is pretty badass...mostly part 3. Shadow Copy is a life saver at work if I was a vista owner I would love this feature at home.
Make Vista Use Multiple Cores to Speed Boot Time [Windows Vista Tip] (6)
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2 months
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Update: It appears this fix isn't really a fix, as Vista's automatic settings do take advantage of dual cores, when possible. Sorry for the unintentionally false hack, and thanks to the many commenters, here and at Gizmodo, who caught it. The Hackosis blog points out that Windows Vista uses only one CPU to boot itself by default, regardless of whatever dual- or quad-core hardware you're using. Enabling multi-core boot might save you a bit of ...
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Piers said:
I've just tried this. Don't know if it's actually going to make a difference, but we shall see
Fix Disappearing System Tray Icons in Vista [How To] (1)
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4 months
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When icons start disappearing from Windows Vista's system tray—like the networking, volume control, or time display—and you can't restore them from the standard options menus, the itch to re-install can be strong indeed. The How-To Geek, however, finds the balm for disappearing Vista icons in the registry, where a few key options need to be deleted to restore your system tray to functionality. Hit the link for instructions on how to kill out the options ...
Reclaim Memory by Mastering Windows' Task Manager (1)
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Lifehacker: Feature (6)
6 months, 3 weeks
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The best way to speed up your PC is to give it more available memory—but freeing up as much of the memory you already have is cheaper and easier than cracking open your case to install a new stick of RAM. It takes a lot of memory to get a modern Windows system up and ... well, not doing anything in particular, really. Between cryptic system processes, confusing "helper" applications, and background utilities, a whole ...
