Windows Vista Resources

Microsoft has released details of a study it commissioned that found that total cost of ownership for Windows Vista on mobile PCs is $605 (£305) less annually than Windows XP.

According to research conducted by Wipro and GCR Custom Research, total cost of ownership for Windows XP is $4,407 (£2,205) annually, while Vista’s cost is $3,802 (£1,905). regole pokerpoker gamepoker 5 drawgioco poker online gratisseven card stud in lineavideo poker on linepoker per pcpoker on line in italianogame on line poker888 pokergioco video poker gratismebeliregolamento pokergiocare onlinestreap poker7 card stud onlinedraw poker,draw poker gold,poker 5 card drawtexas holdem calculatorcome giocare a pokerlive poker 3d,poker live,download live pokerguida poker onlineomaha poker onlinepoker downloadfree omaha pokerbet and win pokerpoker no on linescarica gioco pokervc pokergioca a poker on linegiochi streep pokertexas holdem milano3c texas holdem pokergiochi seven card studgiochi online pokercarte giocogioco poker scaricare gratisinternet pokerwww pokerprobabilità pokerholdem poker italiaimparare a giocare a pokerpoker su internet gratispoker online osxforum poker on linegiochi poker gratis da scaricareworld tour pokerholdem poker on linegioco poker gratuitopoker tournament 2007компютриgioco poker online gratis,poker game online gratis,poker online gratisseven card stud inlinea The $4,407 figure was derived from costs of hardware, software, IT labour, and user costs. Mobile PCs were the focus because these units will outship desktop systems by 2010, said Hiroshi Sakakibara, product manager for Windows Product Management at Microsoft.

It can happen anywhere, at any time. You’re doing your job, minding your own business, and it suddenly dawns on you: you’re the company’s webmaster.

There was a time when the title referred to someone who built the corporate website and managed its content, but today those are largely two different things. Many firms have decided it’s cheaper and easier to hire an outside firm to do the site building and hosting, while internal staff deal with the information that’s put up on the Web.

Continue Reading »
Accidental Webmasters Rejoice - Help is Out There by Shane Schick

Question: I’ve got Windows XP and would like to stick with it. How long will Microsoft support XP? Will I get herded into a Vista upgrade at some point?

Answer: Microsoft may be putting all its marketing resources
behind Windows Vista, but Windows XP has plenty of life left in it. The company
is working on a third service-pack update for XP, which it plans to ship in
the first half of 2008.

Elsewhere on its site (http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3221), Microsoft
says "mainstream support" for the Home Edition of XP, meaning continued
development of security fixes and other patches, will stop April 14, 2009. "Extended
support," in which it will only release security updates, will end April
8, 2014.

Source: Washington Post

Question: I set my Web browser to remember my bank user name and password, but it won’t type them in for me. Is something wrong with my browser?

Answer: this is a site-specific thing. The author of a Web
site can prevent visitors’ browsers from logging in automatically by adding
extra source code ("autocomplete=’off’ ") to a sign-in page.

When your browser reads these instructions, it will ignore any saved passwords;
you’ll have to type in that information yourself. There are ways to tweak browser
settings to bypass this restriction, but none of them are easy. For most people,
the only option is to complain to the site.

Many users will also react by using a simpler password — less secure, but
easier to remember. Or they may jot down the password on a Post-It note stuck
to the monitor. In this way, a measure meant to enhance security (by making
it impossible for a stranger to walk up to your computer and log into your bank
account) can wind up undermining it.

Source: Washington Post

If you don’t mind using more power, you can boost performance by setting your power settings to the High Performance option. Click the Power Options applet in Control Panel and select that choice. By default, this configuration is set to Balanced, which limits the CPU to 50 percent power during normal operation.

Title: Increase Vista’s Performance - Adjust your power settings
Author: Debra Littlejohn Shinder

Fragmented files or a lot of unneeded extra files on the disk can slow down performance. Vista provides a disk cleanup tool, which you can access from Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools. Specify a drive you want to clean up, and the tool will estimate the amount of space you can recover by running the cleanup process.

Vista’s bundled Disk Defragmenter should be run regularly to help optimise your system’s performance.

Defragmenting the disk rearranges data on it so that all the parts of a file are together; this allows Vista to access those files quicker. The built-in disk defragmenter is also accessed from the System Tools menu. The defragmentation process itself can slow down your computer, so you may want to schedule it to run at a time when you aren’t using the computer. Third-party defrag utilities are also available.

Title: Increase Vista’s Performance - Clean up and defrag the disk
Author: Debra Littlejohn Shinder

Vista has a much-improved search function, but it’s dependent on indexing the files and programs on your hard disk so they can be found quickly. When the indexing process is running, however, it can slightly slow down other programs you’re try ing to run at the same time.

You can select the locations you want to index; fewer locations will result in less indexing and thus better overall performance. On the other hand, you’ll get better search performance by indexing all locations. You can’t turn the indexing feature off completely, but you can adjust locations indexed by selecting Adjust Indexing Options in the left pane of the Performance Information And Tools applet.

Title: Increase Vista’s Performance - Adjust indexing options
Author: Debra Littlejohn Shinder

There are a lot of visual enhancements that make Vista look like Vista, such as the animations when minimising and maximising windows, fading or sliding menus, shadows under the menus and mouse pointer, and thumbnails of graphics files instead of dull icons. However, all this bling consumes resources, and if performance is your priority, the operating system will run faster without them.

Cutting down on Vista’s graphical goodies will boost its performance.

The Performance Options dialogue box can be accessed through the Adjust Visual Effects link in the left pane of the Performance Information And Tools applet. On the Visual Effects tab, you can customise these settings individually, turning off the ones you don’t want, to help speed performance. Or you can disable all of the visual effects by clicking the Adjust For Best Performance option.

Title: Increase Vista’s Performance - Turn off visual enhancements
Author: Debra Littlejohn Shinder

You may find that you have a lot of programs loading automatically when you boot Windows, especially if you bought your Vista system from a hardware vendor who added lots of software. Some of these you may want, such as antivirus or anti-spyware programs, but many of them you probably don’t even use or use only occasionally and don’t want to run all the time. Yet they’re all loading into memory and consuming your system resources — and thus slowing down your computer as they run in the background.

Windows Defender’s Software Explorer lets you manage many startup programs: the fewer are loaded into memory, the faster your Vista system will go.

Some programs can be prevented from starting automatically by removing them from the Startup folder. Others are configured in the registry to run at startup. Many can be managed through the Windows Defender Software Explorer, which you can access from the Manage Startup Programs link in the left pane of the Performance Information And Tools applet.

Title: Increase Vista’s Performance - Eliminate extra startup programs
Author: Debra Littlejohn Shinder

If you have enough RAM, the most likely hardware culprit on a slow-moving Vista machine is the video card. You need a fairly high-end card to run Aero at all, but some vendors are selling computers with graphics cards that run it badly. You can find out whether your video card is the bottleneck by checking your Windows Experience Index (WEI) score from the Performance Information and Tools applet in Control Panel.

Check Windows Experience Index — your graphics card might be holding back Vista’s performance.

The onboard video adapters in most systems aren’t powerful enough to run Vista properly. If you want to run Aero and be happy doing it, get a card that’s Vista Premium Certified. As with system RAM, the more video RAM you have the better, and if you want to play Vista games, be sure your card supports DirectX 10.

Title: Increase Vista’s Performance - Get a good video card
Author: Debra Littlejohn Shinder