Monday, January 05, 2009

5 Windows Vista New Year's Resolutions

So, my New Year's present to myself was a fresh install of Vista. I've decided I'm going to roll with this and try to make the best of it. Here are 5 things I'm going to try differently this time around:

  • I will learn to love Windows Gadgets. I think the magic here is the Windows + Spacebar key combination which brings all the gadgets into view. This means that I can have a 1 click dashboard to the world, or something like that.
  • I will resist temptation and not disable User Account Controls. Yes, it means more annoying Are you sure? questions from Vista, but it's time I took their security seriously instead of just turning it all off and winging it.
  • I will start using the user directory structure proposed by Vista. Microsoft finally dropped the "My" from "My Documents," and related folders, which was both silly (who's documents were they, if not mine?) and added a unnecessary space to the file name. If they are going to grow up a little, I should play along.
  • I will use the Windows Backup and Restore Center to create nightly backups. I always claim I'm going to get my backup-strategy-act together, and I never do. Now, Vista has made it drop dead simple - I will follow their lead and embrace them.
  • I will read more Vista help documentation, to do things like learn new key combinations and ways to tweak the UI so it works better for me. You can teach an old Unix geek new tricks. Any suggestions for sites I should be reading for tips?

What else should I be embracing about Vista?

Oh, and just in case you think I've totally lost my mind, I still do 90% of my work in a cygwin rxvt and an emacs buffer.

1 comment:

  1. Granted I can't speak intelligently on Vista's backup & restore utility, but XP's leaves quite a bit to be desired. I use Acronis TrueImage and have been quite satisfied with it. Another nice utility is Diskeeper. It constantly maintains your system so you rarely (if ever) need to defragment and uses very little system resources to do so. It will also defragment your Master File Table and Paging File, which Windows' defragment utility won't do.

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