Speeding up Windows Vista

I have finally put a copy of vista on my machine, and I have a few observations:

• It is pretty
• It is different enough from Windows XP that some things are hard to find
• The continual nagging and "are you sure" questions drives me crazy
• It is slow

I wouldn't call it more efficient, but it is the newest windows, so we all better get confortable with it.

Here are some _wonderful_ resources I found online that allowed me to get vista running on my pc at about the same speed as winxp, and I am pleased to say that it is a bit more stable than XP as well.  After all, vista is based on the windows 2003 kernel, which has been very powerful and reliable.

Turn off the nagging:

The continual popups are from a new service called "UAC" or User Access Control.  Read this article (and google it for more info) and learn what it is, and deceide if you want to turn it off.  It may make your PC more vulnerable, but I will accept that risk.  What you do is up to you.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/12/19/turn-off-or-disable-user-account-control-uac-in-windows-vista/

Turn off services, change the UI, etc, etc.

Here is a great guide to streamlining Vista, turning off services that Vista assumed you wanted, and some other neat tricks like using a USB memory key to speed up application access.  I was thoroughly impressed with the impact these changes had.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2110595,00.asp

Overall, I was very hesitant to move forward using Vista.  It seemed too bulky and multimedia heavy to be productive.  Plus windows explorer is different!!  (I don't know why MS did this -- poor decision in my opinion).  These updates will help to have a manageable and usable windows vista machine.

Happy computing