What I need to know about Vista Premium

[bandit]

So if you havent read, I bought a Dell and its coming with Vista Premium. For those who have Premium or Ultimate or even Home, what tips or tricks would I need to know or any changes to configurations.

Please no "Vista is crap" or "OSX is better". I honestly prefer Windows XP but it wasnt offered and since I'm getting a new computer, might as well upgrade to Vista since sooner or later, XP will not be supported.

[Chux]

Turn off the UAC, or get bugged every 2 minutes about "Vista is stopping you from doing something that might damage your system"

[Dyne]

or leave it on and just put up with the permission prompts for the first couple days until you give yourself access to everything you use.

it really is a good idea if more than one person uses it. i just hate how it "pops" out of the Aero interface to tell you.

other than that i didn't really change too much on mine. one thing i will not and pay careful attention to this. if something hardware related is working and Windows Update has an update, usually you do not NEED it. my NIC card was working fine, but there was a new driver on WU. i got it and it borked my card until i rolled back the driver (which isn't hard to do, you just shouldn't have to).

[George]

There are a number of things you can do in order to boost performance and speed, but the first thing to do is immediately run Windows Updater, and to wait a few minutes even after it says it's done. I can't explain why, but I would restart immediately after they said they were done and each time that happened the computer would fail to restart, prompting a cold reboot, which lead to the BSOD and having to repair the registry. Could be a problem specific to me, but it's worth trying just for the sake of sanity.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2110595,00.asp

I used some of the advice on that article to help things along. It does help.

[bandit]

Turn off the UAC, or get bugged every 2 minutes about "Vista is stopping you from doing something that might damage your system"

Excuse my noobish but whats UAC stand for?

or leave it on and just put up with the permission prompts for the first couple days until you give yourself access to everything you use.

it really is a good idea if more than one person uses it. i just hate how it "pops" out of the Aero interface to tell you.

other than that i didn't really change too much on mine. one thing i will not and pay careful attention to this. if something hardware related is working and Windows Update has an update, usually you do not NEED it. my NIC card was working fine, but there was a new driver on WU. i got it and it borked my card until i rolled back the driver (which isn't hard to do, you just shouldn't have to).

I'll be the main person using it. If the family must use my computer, it will be to use the internet and thats about it.

There are a number of things you can do in order to boost performance and speed, but the first thing to do is immediately run Windows Updater, and to wait a few minutes even after it says it's done. I can't explain why, but I would restart immediately after they said they were done and each time that happened the computer would fail to restart, prompting a cold reboot, which lead to the BSOD and having to repair the registry. Could be a problem specific to me, but it's worth trying just for the sake of sanity.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2110595,00.asp

I used some of the advice on that article to help things along. It does help.

Thanks. i'll take a look at the link when I have a chance.

Thanks to everyone for helping me and answering my stupid noob questions.

[Chux]

User Access Control.

[bandit]

User Access Control.

Ah ok. I guess when i get it, I'll play around with the OS.

BTW, I would have no problem installing and using AVG, Ad-Aware or any of those adaware, av scanners or firewalls right?

[bandit]

Whats a good CD burning program similar to that of NERO? I usually just copy CDs, burn data onto CDs, make VCDs and burn .iso's

[everlast88]

disable the gadgets, unless you have 2 gigs of ram it uses up way more than it should, i only have 1 gig of ram right now and my pc runs slow even with gadgets and UAC shut off

[GohanX]

2 gigs of ram is a good idea anyway. The only Vista machines I've used that are faster than my old XP (1.8 with 512 ddr1) machine all had 2 gigs of ram or more.

I'm no Vista expert though, I'm sure you can fine tune it to run fast with 1 gig after removing the bloatware that come on most PCs.