Strip Down Your Vista Installation with vLite

Windows Vista only: Like its XP-oriented predecessor nLite, vLite is a pre-installation utility that lets you decide which programs and components of Windows Vista are included when you go for a fresh install, allowing you to remove some of Vista's more resource-heavy pieces and make custom DVDs or CDs to install that same slim Vista later. What's more, vLite seems to allow you to pre-answer the typical setup questions, so you can install Vista unattended (and, it seems, without a Product Key handy). It's not a tool for beginners, as many of the changes can't be undone once the OS is in place, but for those who find themselves re-installing Vista frequently, it's certainly a useful utility. vLite is a free download for Windows Vista only.

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Customize your desktop icons

Recently we have received e-mails from our readers asking us to help them customize or restore their standard desktop icons. In order to answer their questions and also help other people having the same "problems", we decided to publish this article. We will show you how to customize the list of standard icons shown on the desktop, how to change their icons and how to restore the originals, in case you want the standard icons back.

First, right click on your desktop and select Personalize.

The Personalization panel will open. Click on Change desktop icons.

Now, the Desktop Icon Settings window will launch. Here, you can select the icons you want to be shown on your desktop by checking the appropriate boxes. Computer stands for the My Computer icon (from Windows XP), User's Files is the shortcut to your user folder (where you can find your Documents, Music, Pictures, Contacts) and so on.

After you have checked the icons you want on your desktop you can also change their image. To do that, click on the icon you want to change and then on the Change Icon button.

In the Change Icon window you have to Browse to the new icon image. When you have found the new icon image, select it and click on Open.

You can follow this procedure for all the icons shown in the Desktop Icon Settings window.

If you don't like the new icons you have assigned you can always go back to the default ones. To do that, go to the Desktop Icon Settings window, select the icon you want to restore and press the Restore Default button.

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Windows Aero

The Windows Aero experience

Windows Aero builds on the basic Windows Vista user experience and offers Microsoft's best-designed, highest-performing desktop experience. Using Aero requires a PC with a compatible graphics adapter and running a Premium or Business edition of Windows Vista.

A noticeably new element of the Aero experience is the translucent effect of Aero Glass, featuring dynamic reflections and smooth animations. The glass windows create an open, lightweight environment―and more importantly, help you to better focus on your content, rather than on the surrounding interface.

Two exciting new Aero features, Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D, provide a new way to confidently manage the windows on your desktop, so you can see them in a new visually striking, yet convenient way. Beyond the new graphics and visual polish, the Windows Aero desktop experience performs as elegantly and professionally as it looks, with smoother window handling, increased graphics stability, and glitch-free visuals. All of which give you a simple, comfortable, and high-quality experience.

Glass

Aero features windows that are truly translucent. In addition to giving the desktop a more polished look and feel, the effect of glass allows you to more easily focus on the contents contained within a window, and also provides better context for the surrounding elements on your desktop while you're working.



Aero Glass creates a truly translucent window, keeping the focus on your content and helping you to keep track of other windows on your desktop.

Dynamic windows

In Windows Vista, windows are dynamic. When minimized, a window will subtly animate to a specific location on the taskbar, making it easier to locate when you need it later.
Taskbar thumbnails

With Windows Aero, live taskbar thumbnails show you the contents of the windows that are currently open, in the background, or minimized in the taskbar. When you pause your mouse over a window tile on the taskbar, you see the thumbnail of the "live" contents of that window without having to bring it to the forefront of your screen.



Thumbnails show you the content contained in minimized windows in your taskbar.

Windows Flip

Windows Flip is an update of the feature known as ALT+TAB in previous versions of Windows. With Aero, Windows Flip shows you live thumbnails of your open windows instead of generic icons, making it easier to identify the window you're looking for. It even lets you instantly minimize all the windows on your desktop.



Windows Flip is an update to ALT+TAB that displays open windows as live thumbnails.

Windows Flip 3D

With Aero, Windows Flip 3D creates a view of your open windows in a three-dimensional stack on your desktop. Using the Windows logo+TAB keys, you can flip through the open windows to quickly locate and select the window you want.



Windows Flip 3D provides the same functionality as ALT+TAB, with the added ability to see all open windows simultaneously, as well as a much larger representation of what is in each window.

Smoother window performance

When using Windows Aero, open windows glide smoothly on your screen when you move or resize them. There are no redraw artifacts, latency, or "tearing" effects that you sometimes see, particularly in windows that display dynamic content such as video. Using Aero will even reduce legacy graphics driver-related problems on your system, giving you an even more confident and stable Windows desktop experience.

Some product features are only available in certain editions of Windows Vista and may require advanced or additional hardware.

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DirectX10: The Next Generation in Gaming

Exclusivity to Windows Vista

DirectX10 is exclusive to Windows Vista and is not slated to be supported by any other platform. This will ensure that the next-gen games will be available on Windows Vista before any other platform.

The new display driver or graphics model in Windows Vista, WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model), is the main reason for DirectX10’s exclusivity to the operating system. It may come as a surprise to know that the graphics driver model hasn’t changed much since Windows NT4 – WDDM is the first major revamp of the system and is designed for scaling high-capability graphics.
DirectX10 depends on these improvements in the graphics model and so, it leverages the virtualization and architectural improvements of WDDM, in both the APIs as well as the underlying infrastructure.

Gamer Benefits

DirectX10 offers a wide variety of benefits to gamers. Let’s dive into the details now:

• Greater detail, realistic shadows

Picture 1: DirectX9 (Halo: Combat Evolved)

Picture 2: DirectX10 (Crysis)

You can see the difference for yourself when we compare Picture 1, a screenshot taken from ‘Halo: Combat evolved’, a PC game which was among the best of its class at release to Picture 2, an image from ‘Crysis’, a PC game which is slated to release soon. Halo uses DirectX9.0b to support its graphics while Crysis makes use of DirectX10.

DX10 adds a new level of realism to games by making characters more life-like. You can see the incredible detail in the screenshot above. The facial expressions, pockmarks on the face, the handle-bar moustache and the glazed looking eyes all add to the realism.
In DirectX10, the next generation in graphics has arrived.

• Greater detail, realistic shadows

Picture 3: DirectX9

Picture 4: DirectX10

DirectX9 ‘simulates’ detail with techniques like normal mapping while DirectX10 actually increases the amount of detail in game characters and materials. Shown above are two fish, the first, in Picture 3, is rendered using DirectX9 while the second, super-cool looking fella in Picture 4 is rendered in DirectX10. Observe the spikes with respect to the white background (on the silhouette edges), you see that the bumps on the DX10 fish are a lot more pronounced than the ones on the DX9 fish.

DirectX10 also offers more realistic looking shadows. Showcased below, in Picture 5 is a character with its shadow’s volume accentuated. The green light shows just how the shadow is created (depending on the light source) and how the shadow is featured on the ground. On DirectX9, the shadow volume is generated on the CPU, reducing performance for every new shadowed character on-screen whereas in DirectX10, the shadow volume can be generated and rendered entirely on the more-capable GPU.

Picture 5: Shadow Volume (Realistic Shadows)

• Dynamic in-game scenarios

Picture 8 Picture 9

Picture 10

Picture 11

Pictures 8 through 11 show a vines growing on and around a crypt as time passes while in a game. DirectX10 facilitates the game engine to dynamically change the appearance of the crypt with passing time. This enables the in-game levels/scenarios to evolve with time passed inside the game, thus replacing the static environment with a unique one by simulating natural growth.DirectX9 is not capable of creating new geometry on the GPU. It is also not capable of storing intermediate geometric results, i.e. scenarios between Picture 8 and Picture 11 could not have been GPU-generated using DirectX9.

• Motion blurring

Picture 12 Picture 13

Seen above in Pictures 12 and 13 are examples of realistic motion blurring, which is made possible by DirectX10. In earlier versions of DirectX, game developers were required to smudge the final image to achieve motion blur. In DirectX10 however, motion blur can be performed in object-space, simulating a camera exposure of an object across multiple sub-frames.

For technical details on the above benefits, please visit: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/

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DirectX 9 vs DirectX 10: Worth Upgrading to Vista For?

One of the main (only?) improvements in Vista for gamers would be the inclusion of DirectX 10. And to make gamers upgrade, they made DirectX 10 a Vista exclusive. Is it worth it? See for yourself.

Above are two screenshots of the same game rendered in DX9 and DX10. Can you tell which is which? Maybe you need to see the larger versions after the jump. Can you tell now? If not, then it's probably not worth it.

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What is User Account Control?

User Account Control (UAC) is a new security component in Windows Vista. UAC enables users to perform common tasks as non-administrators, called standard users in Windows Vista, and as administrators without having to switch users, log off, or use Run As. A standard user account is synonymous with a user account in Windows XP. User accounts that are members of the local Administrators group will run most applications as a standard user. By separating user and administrator functions while enabling productivity, UAC is an important enhancement for Windows Vista.

When an administrator logs on to a computer running Windows Vista, the user is assigned two separate access tokens. Access tokens, which contain a user's group membership and authorization and access control data, are used by Windows® to control what resources and tasks the user can access. Before Windows Vista, an administrator account received only one access token, which included data to grant the user access to all Windows resources. This access control model did not include any failsafe checks to ensure that users truly wanted to perform a task that required their administrative access token. As a result, malicious software could install on users' computers without notifying the users. (This is sometimes referred to as "silent" installation.)

Even more damaging, because the user is an administrator, the malicious software could use the administrator's access control data to infect core operating system files and, in some instances, to become nearly impossible to remove.

The primary difference between a standard user and an administrator in Windows Vista is the level of access the user has over core, protected areas of the computer. Administrators can change system state, turn off the firewall, configure security policy, install a service or a driver that affects every user on the computer, and install software for the entire computer. Standard users cannot perform these tasks and can only install per-user software.

To help prevent malicious software from silently installing and causing computer-wide infection, Microsoft developed the UAC feature. Unlike previous versions of Windows, when an administrator logs on to a computer running Windows Vista, the user’s full administrator access token is split into two access tokens: a full administrator access token and a standard user access token. During the logon process, authorization and access control components that identify an administrator are removed, resulting in a standard user access token. The standard user access token is then used to start the desktop, the Explorer.exe process. Because all applications inherit their access control data from the initial launch of the desktop, they all run as a standard user as well.

After an administrator logs on, the full administrator access token is not invoked until the user attempts to perform an administrative task.

Contrasting with this process, when a standard user logs on, only a standard user access token is created. This standard user access token is then used to start the desktop.

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Windows Flip and Flip 3D

Using the new Windows Aero technology, available in Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions, Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D render live thumbnail images of the exact contents of your open windows, making it easier to identify the one you want. Windows Flip improves on the ALT+TAB method for flipping between windows, while Windows Flip 3D dynamically displays all open windows in a graceful three-dimensional view.


Windows Flip 3D

Windows Flip 3D uses the dimension of visual depth to give you a more comprehensive view of your open windows, helping you sidestep chaos even as you juggle myriad open files and programs.

Windows Flip 3D can even render images of live processes such as currently playing video. Use the START+TAB keys to initiate the 3-D view, then flip through open windows by using arrow keys or the scroll wheel on your mouse to quickly identify and select the one you want. Navigating your desktop has never been this fun.




Scan all open windows in one easy view.

Windows Flip

Windows Flip is a Windows Vista update of the feature known as ALT+TAB in previous versions of Windows. By repeatedly pressing ALT+TAB, you can scroll through a visual list of your open files and programs. Using Windows Aero technology, Windows Flip renders live thumbnails of the exact contents of those open windows instead of generic icons, making it easier to identify the one you want.

In Windows Aero, live taskbar thumbnail images display the actual contents of both windows that are currently open and those that are minimized in the taskbar. When you rest your mouse pointer on a tile on the taskbar, you'll see the "live" contents of that window without having to bring it to the foreground.



View open windows as live thumbnail images.

By arranging your open windows in a way that's visually striking yet convenient, Windows Flip makes it easier to identify the window or windows you're looking for. And, since one of the displayed windows in the Flip view will always be your desktop itself, you'll have an intuitive way to minimize all open windows at once.

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