Windows Vista Essentials PART 3 of 3

PART 3 Applications

Before I dive into this final portion of Vista Essentials I want to provide a disclaimer: What follows is not intended to be an in-depth review of software titles. Instead, it is designed to be an overview of software functionality as it relates to the Vista Experience. Anyone who reads this blog knows I use Photoshop and Lightroom as well as Office and other production pieces of software - I won't be talking about those today because they don't have anything to do with Vista or enhancing the Vista experience.

Edison - Verdiem Sofware - www.verdiem.com/edison/ - FREE

Go green with your PC. Edison is a great application I was recently turned on to by Paul Thurrott. Edison overrides your computer's energy center with a more user-friendly system that will save you on energy by managing more closely when and how your system goes to sleep. If you only have one machine the savings won't be that drastic; however, it becomes drastic when you manage multiple computers.

SnagIt - Tech Smith Products - www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp - $49.95

From the same folks who produce Camtasia (the software I use to record my video tutorials), TechSmith offers a product that is indispensable to me. On the Mac it is so easy to do selective screen captures with built in tools. Upon shifting production to the PC I immediately felt the growing pains of being limited to the "print screen" utility built into Windows. Snagit allows for capturing a window, the entire screen or a selection of the screen and is directly exportable to a jpg. Super great and absolutely necessary for me. I keep a catalog of other photographer's work that I often have to screen capture off of their websites. When I am looking for some inspiration I flip through the photos I have collected. SnagIt also makes the screen grabs you see on this site possible.

ISO Recorder - Alex Feinman - http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm - FREE

Again - this is a feature built into OSX that isn't standard on Windows. I have several peices of software that are ISO images. I have to be able to burn those ISO images to a DVD or CD - this is a VERY basic utility that does just that. No frills, no fancy UI - just integrates into the built in Vista burning window.

Argentum Backup - Argentum - www.argentuma.com/backup.html - $25.00

BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! There are tons of backup solutions out there. I use Argentum because it doesn't create a closed file. A lot of backup software backs up the data to a database driven system that require the backup program be re-installed before the files are unpacked. The backup Argentum creates is just a mirror of the folders it is backing up. This means that if my computer crashes I can grab that drive - toss it in a SATA enclosure and grab any needed data on my other system. It's fast and in a pinch if the worst were to happen I would be back up and running faster than having to re-install my operating system.

WinRAR - RARLAB - www.rarlab.com/shop2rarlab.php?prod=winrar - $29.99

When windows XP offered basic compression utilities for ZIP creation I figured I would never need WinZIP again ... enter the RAR. If you are looking for a great compression utility that smokes what XP and Vista have built in - or find the need to open a RAR compresses file WinRAR is the way to go.

IrfanView - http://www.irfanview.com/ - FREE

The ULTIMATE image viewer. I have TONS of RAW, PSD, PNG, JPG, etc files that I hate having to open photoshop or bridge to open - enter IrfanView. It's fast and that is why I use it. I wish I could say I use it to 10% of it's potential; however, I just use it to view material. This application can view, batch process, resize, convert file tyes, act as an interface for your scanner, and so much more. For me - I needed a way to open my images on the fly very quickly - IrfanView allows me to do that.

FireFox 3.0- Mozilla - www.mozilla.com - FREE

Last but not least - Mozilla Firefox 3.0. I have talked about this browser in the past so this will be brief. I aplaud Microsoft for the phenominal work on IE 7 - it is an amazing browser. I aplaud Apple for bringing Safari to the windows side - it handles RSS like none else. Both these browsers are installed on my system; however, I rarely use them. Firefox is my principal browser. Great tabbed browsing experience, the best password manager I have EVER been exposed to. I LOVE using it. It seems that Firefox is like Michael Phelps - so far ahead will anyone catch it?

There you have it - we have reached the end FINALLY Three days - three pieces to the puzzel. These posts have been my journey to a great Vista experience. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me or post in the comments. If there is another piece of software you feel I would enjoy taking a look at please shoot me a link and I will take a look - see. This final portion of Windows Vista Essentials will be Monday's post so look for the Video tomorrow.

Windows Vista Essentials PART 2 of 3

PART 2 Configuration & Tweaks

Two Facts:

1. Everyone is different and we all like our icons in a certain place or like the interface to look a certain way. No matter what operating system you use one shapes it and molds it into something unique and personal.
2. Computer manufacturers load their computers with unnecessary, bloated and annoying demo, trial, or marginally functional software. This is unfortunate; however, it is a fact of life. When paired with the lack of a CD or DVD containing the operating system means removing said software isn't as simple as it used to be.

Everyone is Different

How you choose to customize the windows interface is up to you. There isn't realy a wrong way to make your OS look - just make sure it is efficient for your work flow. For me that means making my taskbar thicker to accomodate "large" size quick launch buttons. The applications I live by day in and day out reside in the quicklaunch. The utilities and programs I use ocassionally are relegated to the start menu. I go into the settings and turn off the audo fill feature for the start menu because I want to choose what is in the list - not let Vista (or XP for that matter) pick what is in the list.

Possibly the most preformance impactfull change is the removal of the Widnows Sidebar. I've never realy had a use for it (but hey - I disable dashboard via terminal on my mac too so I guess I am an odd one). The sidebar eats up processor cycles, available RAM and screen space - three things I am not willing to part with. I don't have Windows hide my innactive taskbar items because I want to see what is running - and out of sight out of mind often means lost preformance to fluff tasks runing in the background. Finally - I clear the desktop. I use the desktop for my files I am currently working with and at the end of the day or week they are either deleted or filed in an appropriate folder.

Loose The Bloat

The easiest way I know of to remove the junk that comes loaded on a machine is to have it optimized by your local Geek Squad. Optimization usually takes 15-45 minutes (depending if the unit has a long first boot up process) and will only set you back $29.99. If you are more of a do-it-yourselfer you can remove the extra bloat-ware and tweak the operating system with any number of utilities; however, I have found the Geek Squad does a great job and all their work is backed for 30 days - so if they screw something up they will make it right. In the old days one would simply pop the operating system disk in the computer and install just the Operating System and ONLY the software desired. Presto - clean fast copy of the operating system. Unfortunatly, Toshiba and Gateway are the only manufacturers on the Windows side still offering disks. Dell just stoped including them; however, one can request a set for free - you just have to ask. Even companies like HP who give users the ability to burn recovery disks don't give the user a way to JUST instal the OS apart from the bundled software. I am sure there are some great tweaking utilities out there that do a great job; however, my unit was optimized before I took it home and I have no complaints. I did my Virus / Spyware installs and other configurations - but OS tweaking is somthing that I wanted Geek Squad to take care of for me.

The final peice of the puzzle are the applications which I will cover tomorrow. I have a few applications for enhancing the Vista Experience but I won't get into those here - I'll save that for tomorrow.

Windows Vista Essentials PART 1 of 3

Four months ago I took the plunge. I picked up a Vista based Windows machine after 4 years of exclusively owning a Mac. When I dropped my Dell on eBay Windows XP was just finding its feet in the world. Now all my old tricks and applications are either out-dated or just flat out don't work. I'm a new fish in the pond. I had HUGE reservations about living in a dual operating system home - I was very comfortable in OS X; however, my 4 year old PowerBook was struggling to keep up with my RAW work flow. I needed a production machine badly and I was blessed with an amazing machine that should have cost me immeasurably more than I paid for it:

HP Pavilion M9040N
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
3GB DDR2 667 RAM
3x 320 GB HD
TV Tuner Card
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS 256GB Video Ram
Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit
(hopeing to upgrade to Ultimate 64 in the not to distant future)

My initial reservations around Windows Vista were not dissimilar to the general public's distaste for Microsofts current operating system; however, the deal was too good so I dropped the green and picked up the machine listed above. I wish I could tell you that my first few weeks were an amazing experience but it wasn't. I had USB driver issues that caused my computer to blue screen all over the place (since patched) and stuff wasn't where I was used to it being from XP. I was cranky and frustrated and so after putting up with it for about 2 months I installed XP on one of the 3 drives in the computer so that I could give it a try to sooth my woes. After a few weeks in XP I found that Vista actually ran things like Photoshop and Lightroom better. GASP! The past month has been a journey for me a journey of acceptance and tweaking. Surrendering to the superiority of Vista over XP (not OS X) I decided that if I was going to live with Vista I had better get it set up to do what I wanted. This weekend I will be posting a 3 part post windows vista essentials. I will be sharing some of the software, websites, and configuration utilities that have transformed my Vista experience into one of the BEST Windows experiences I have ever had. We live in a Vista world - lets make the best of it!