Vista

I haven't written a post in the past 10 days and many of my friends including some readers started pinging me to check on my status :) I am very much alive, only that I was caught up with a little work and also decided to take some time off :D FeedDemon, the RSS reader that I use, was filled up with so many new posts !! I was forced to use the "Mark Folder Read" option for most of RSS folders. However I did a quick check on India Technology Bloggers feed and got myself updated with the latest happenings in the tech world. (Thanks to QOT for staring this network, its really useful) Orkut seems to have got ...

Windows Vista is being officially released for home users in many countries.

In New York, they hired acrobats to display the Windows logo, In Australia, they had skywriters grab attention, while in Agra they had dancers perform in front of the Taj Mahal, and all this to try and get PC users the world over take notice of its latest offerings — Windows Vista and 2007 Office System. [Via ET]

I am not sure if I would upgrade to vista, however this bLaugh comic is worth a laugh :D

In one of my previous post I had linked to Windows Vista Wallpapers shared by Stephen Silber.

Haklabs has shared another set of 54 photos from Vista RTM build. Download it here !

Its hosted on Rapidshare;Wonder why people use this sharing service, I would recommend using AMD's Streamload for sharing big files !

Brajeshwar has created another Windows Vista Wallpaper pack and has around 70 photos ! As far as I know the official release has around 54 images, I am not sure about the extra 16 images in this pack :)

This might sound crazy; but I make it a point to reinstall Windows every 6-8 months. I install a lot of tools/applications and over the period of time the PC becomes very slow. Even if I do DiskCleanup and Registry cleanup, its not of much use ! Some of the steps I take before reinstalling Windows 1. Take a snapshot of the Start Menu Programs ! It does help in 2. Check/Backup files in My Documents/Desktop. (Backing up the entire user profile directory might make more sense) 3. Check Program Files (Many a times I have lost important files such as the save files of Games, local blog data etc) 4. Use a tool/browser plugin like Google Browser Sych to backup your browser ...

If you are planning to upgrade to Windows vista, you should also start planning to upgrade your PC hardware ?

But do you really need to upgrade your hardware ? The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor is the right tool to answer this !

It recently had an "upgrade" to RC and the same is available for download here

The tool advises you on which part of the system you need to upgrade in order to support vista. Its also suggests as to which version of vista will be suitable.

My PC seems to have passed the test and hopefully I can upgrade to vista with no issues ! How about yours ?

More on Vista

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Microsoft has released instructions for users planning to upgrade to Windows Vista.The upgrade options are dependent on the version of Windows that you are currently running. The table below outlines the upgrade options mapped to the different Windows Vista editions The two upgrade options available are described below:

The Beta2 version of Windows Vista was released a few weeks back. I had quite an adventure installing the Vista on my notebook. Check this post for more on this !

One of the requirements for Vista installation is that it requires a NTFS primary partition. I was so enthusiastic that I formatted my XP partition (FAT32) and installed Vista. I did use Vista for quite some time, later I realized some of the important applications that I use were not working in Vista. Vista used to freeze frequently and I hated it when I had to forcefully shutdown the notebook. I badly wanted to go back to XP

One option I had was to go for dual

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Grab hold of the Vista Wallpapers at this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephensilber/

I have been a big fan of ClearType fonts and it was one of the features that I liked very much in IE7 and Windows Vista. For those who have not read my post on IE7 Beta3, here is the excerpt of ClearType: ClearType is a software technology developed by Microsoft that improves the readability of text on existing LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays), such as laptop screens, Pocket PC screens and flat panel monitors. With ClearType font technology, the words on your computer screen look almost as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper. ClearType works by accessing the individual vertical color stripe elements in every pixel of an LCD screen. Before ClearType, ...

Microsoft has released the Beta 3 of IE 7 Browser. I did try the Beta 2 of IE7. Most of the feature that are already there in Firefox/Opera has been added in IE7. The only feature that I liked the most is the ClearType font rendering technology used in the browser. About ClearType ClearType is a software technology developed by Microsoft that improves the readability of text on existing LCDs (Liquid Crystal Displays), such as laptop screens, Pocket PC screens and flat panel monitors. With ClearType font technology, the words on your computer screen look almost as sharp and clear as those printed on a piece of paper. ClearType works by accessing ...