VistaJuice

All rite, some news ... If you wish to run Vista in Parallels on your Mac, you can do so legally only with the Enterprise or Ultimate editions? W00t? Well it's obvious since Home Edition EULA doesn't allow vitalization.

Surely, you can run any version in Parallels, but we are talking about running Vista in compliance with the EULA. On the other hand, you can always (legally) install it over the BootCamp - and then restart your Mac in order to boot into Vista. This seems to be the best way to do it if you really want to get it on your Mac, since as some have experienced - Vista in Parallels does not run quite well yet - it's ok - but no network and no experience index.
Also, check this out: Vista runs better on MacPro than Apple's OS X.

Source: Engadget
Visit also: Parallels

Wow, I remember that looooong time ago I saw this awesome video somewhere on-line and since then I completely lost track of it ... This is the main thing that got me so hyped up about Vista in the first place, I jumped the Longhorn wagon, downloaded the early Alpha versions and bragged about this awesome OS ever since ... Look where it got me - I got a blog I'm writing in Windows Live Writer (Beta), on Vista ;)

The question is, did Microsoft answer to it's concept? In my opinion - ALMOST. Surely Vista at this moment does not look as cool as in the concept, but If nothing else, with such innovative new design, new ways for programmers to make amazing looking applications (just see Office 2007), I think this concept is still not that far away from truth.

The main thing is - Microsoft gave us all the Potential to be more productive and make more interactive and innovative applications - and within a year - you'll see - this will come true. Some crazy looking, beautiful new apps will be developed which will change the way we use computers. Also, I really hope that someone at Microsoft checks out this Video as well - and makes sure that we do get the coolness you can see below. They made a great start - now it's at least possible for programmers to make such things happen. I see no reason why this will not happen.

Check out the video and let me know what you think:

All rite! I love when a new product like Vista gets released and then all of these cool things start arriving from Microsoft to even further improve our experience.

This time it's Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC). The update will be available through the Windows Update by the end of this week, but if you're like me and want to jump that wagon right away, click on the link below and get it right now:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx

Note that you should uninstall any previous version of WMDC before doing the upgrade, so don't forget ;)

WMDC is a nice app which lets you synchronize content and manage all of your multimedia with Windows Mobile powered devices. A nice thing is that Windows Mobile Device Center is only supported on Vista.... Well, not nice for those of you who do not have it yet, but there you go, one more reason to upgrade ;)

Well it was just about the time for something like this too happen. Not that I did not expect it but really it seems that websites and blogs around the world are just making a big hype about nothing.

Namely, with the introduction of the new Vista's Speech recognition program (which I did not find all that impressive), people could host malicious sound files on their web sites which could intentionally trigger some commands on your computer. Microsoft did confirm the bug, and suggested:

• A user can turn off their computer speakers and/or microphone.
• If a user does run an audio file that attempts to execute commands on their system, they should close the Windows Media Player, turn off speech recognition and restart their computer.

Also, the best thing is, if you really do not have to use the Speech Recognition - just simply turn it off... It's not like wow. Not that it is too bad, but just for the sake of fun, watch the video below:

Source: ZD Net Blogs (here and here)

I hear so many people complain about Vista's defrag tool lately. Sure it's not all pretty and what not, it looks a lot simpler, but here is why some things are the way they are, and why they are better. Less is more!

For those who do not know, Defrag is a special program, which on Vista runs even automatically in the background, whereby parts of data files on all segments of a computer hard disk are taken from their fragmented state (with parts of files spread all over the disk), and grouped together in complete-file segments. This makes it quicker for applications to find the files they need and frees up disk space, making the computer run more efficiently.

In XP, defrag program would go, check the current status of the drive and suggest if we should defragment the drive. Then, it would read those files and try to piece their parts as close together as possible in order to remove those fragments and speed up the system. That was pretty much it. A linear process where your computer knew what has to be done pretty much before it even starts.

For those not familiar with it, PowerShell is a command line application and scripting tool which provides administrators with amazing tools for automating system tasks through use of scripts. It incorporates numerous utilities; especially a lot better navigation through the Registry and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).

It was first announced on August 2005 and after a lot of feedback gathering on how it should work, Microsoft released it.

The cool thing is that everything is done via command line interface and the administrative GUI is layered on top of those commands. Administrators will benefit from this since they can script even the most complicated tasks, so for example, a whole Exchange Server could be set up on a machine with administrator running the setup and a script.

Download it now if you need it:

After browsing around the Internet for the past few hours I finally found couple of really nice tips every Vista user should know.

Network Map feature is great but are some of your Non-Vista PC's not placed on the map? Then you need the following download from Microsoft. It enables Windows XP users to be seen on a Network Map on Windows Vista.

• Get it here: Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder

Thanks VistaBase!

Don't you just love the ability in Mac OS where one click of that little tinny mouse wheel brings up all of the gadgets... I sure do...

If you want to do this in Vista, you do not have to minimize gazilion windows, simply click CTRL + SpaceBar (both at the same time) :)

Your gadgets will show immediately ...

Correction
it's the Windows button and the Space Bar ... Sorry about that ;)
Thanks Philip!

It's quite simple really. Thanks to a really great help-like free resource of information on-line (VistaBase.co.uk), here is how it's done:

Open the Run Dialog (type run in the Start Menu Search), and run the following command:

control userpasswords2

Press OK and you will be presented with a nice dialog. Right where it says "User must enter username and password to use this computer", uncheck the box, enter your credentials and you are done.

For more cool info about simple tasks like these and other help, contact me, comment, wait and read on this site or go to VistaBase.co.uk.

You may have noticed that in Vista, when you want to create another partition on a hard drive, you do not get options for choosing a primary or extended partition. This was actually implemented to assist the novice users and make it easier for them to create partitions without knowing should they create a primary or an extended one.

First four partitions you create with this tool will automatically be primary partitions, all subsequent will automatically be set as logical partitions.

Now, if you still need a finer control over this and create say one primary and one extended partitions and not two primary partitions, you can use a Diskpart Command-Line utility.

Head over to KB300415 and read on how to do so if you need.

So, if you wonder how simple the process of the upgrade really is, TechRepublic has a really nice gallery of screenshots so you can see what to expect.

It's really the simplest installation/upgrade of an OS yet!

Click on a pic below to proceed to their gallery.

Via: TechRepublic

P.S> More stories, tips, tricks, etc. are coming later on today and tomorrow - I have the whole thing already thought out and I'll show you all kinds of cool stuff, but I'm just having a minor problem: I went to sleep after 4am for the past tfour nights - so I'm just a little bit lost ;) Tonight I'll get a good night's sleep and from tomorrow - you can enjoy all the cool content as you would expect!

If you can't wait for iTunes for Vista to come out, and why should you, here is a little tip, you can make it work good if you run it as an administrator.

1. Right click on the iTunes shortcut and go to Properties.
2. Under the Compatibility tab check the box saying "Run as an Administrator".
3. Click on the OK and you're done.

You can do this for any of the programs you trust. For example, Total Commander (which I cannot live without), needs this to function properly. I found that Dreamweaver behaves a lot better if run in the Admin mode too ... Photoshop is still OK in non elevated mode.

If you are really into reading a lot and want to find out a lot of cool things about Vista, from Pricing, Setup and Installation, Activation, Networking, Application Compatibility to Multimedia, Integrated Apps Review, Developer Technologies etc ... all in ONE post (28 pages long), then you definitely gotta check out ActiveWin.com's review.

Spece it out guys, it burns the eyes after page 16! ;)

ActiveWin's 28 page Review of Vista

If you have to install Vista on numerous computers, or if you just want to create a special little Installation ISO for yourself with your own set of pre-installed drivers (even those uncertified for vista), you can do so, and more, with vLite.

It will allow you to remove all of the unwanted components so you can run Vista faster.

Nice about it is that it does not use any kind of Hacking or such, but rather it configures the installation directly but with your own configuration.

It's similar to the thing big companies use in order to install OS on all of the machines they make - but all that in a nicer, simpler, and easy to use app.

If you have a nice and fast machine - then you'll do just fine by using the default DVD you purchased. This is for those who like to play with configuring things ;)

Get it at: http://www.vlite.net/

With Aero there are couple of nice things you can do.

1. If your computer is not so much up-to-the-specs for running those transparent windows, you can easily turn the transparency off:

1. Right click on the desktop and choose "Personalize"
2. Click on the first option at the very top: "Window Color and Appearance"
3. Uncheck "Enable Transparency"

2. If you haven't noticed, Vista has some nice menu animations but for someone's taste - they may be a bit too fast or slow, or simply too much. There is something that we can do about this:

1. To turn them off completely go to Start menu and run the following: SystemPropertiesPerformance (for easy access), or if you like to click around right click on your Computer, choose Properties, click on "Advanced system settings", and under the "Advanced" tab you'll have the Performance Settings. (there are actually other ways of getting here too)
2. Once in Performance Settings, under "Visual Effects" uncheck "Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing".

3. If you like the animations so much, you can slow them down so you can see them longer (why would you want this?):

1. Click on Start menu. Type regedit then hit OK.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
3. In the right hand pane, right click on an empty space and from the context menu that appears choose “New > DWORD (32-bit) Value”.
4. Give the new DWORD (32-bit) value a name of AnimationsShiftKey (be careful in spelling this!)
5. Double click on the new DWORD value and give it a value of 1. 
6. Close the Registry Editor and log off of Windows and log back in for this to take effect, OR run net stop uxsms at administrative rights command prompt followed by net start uxsms to restart the DWM engine. When you want to see the slow animations, hold the [Shift] key :)

For tip #3 and some more of these advanced registry tweaks go to - VistaBase!

I surely like to see what's going on and if there is any network traffic, so if you would like to animate your network icon simply right click on it and choose to either animate it or not to.

It is off by default.

If you do not need the instant search in Start menu to look through say all of your conversations or such, you can fine tune it.

1) Right click on the Start Button and choose "Properties". Under "Start Menu" tab, click on "Customize". You'll see something like this:

2) That's where your options are. Uncheck what you need and what you don't need: Search through files, Favorites and history, Communications? The choice is yours.

I was just browsing on-line a bit and I saw an article on Computer World titled: "Review: Vista and mobility: Lots of consolidation, few new features".

Since I think there is more to mobility improvements in Vista, I posted the following as a comment on their site, and I thought I should share it here too ... Do read their post as well since it does talk about other things like Active Sync, Windows Mobility Center (mentioned here by me), and Sync Center.

Here is my two cents (again):

I actually like the little neat things that are in Vista which make me use my laptop in a more productive way.

You say few new features, but I think they are really nice and important new features. I do a lot of presenting with PowerPoint, so being able to set everything for my presentation with one click of a button - and never worry if my messenger is on, if the message is gonna pop up, if the sound is going to be on or off - is a big thing.

Also, connecting to the wireless networks is just a breeze with Vista ... I love the Network Location settings which quickly lets me set to what type of network I am connecting to - Public, Private, or Work. Network sharing and permissions are automatically set - which is a time saver and a big deal when it comes to security.

A very huge part of Mobility is the Offline Files feature of Vista. It was available in XP as well (Called Offline Folders then), but it has improved dramatically. Now all of my files are automatically synced with my home server when I am home - it's a set it and forget it thing ...

Together with Disk encryption, so in case I loose my laptop or if it gets stolen - I can at least rest assured my data is safe from weary eyes. Thanks to the great Backup and Recovery support - I would be able to install my Vista with all the files form the laptop within 2 hours - from the Complete PC backup image and incremental backups I have on the server as well - which were as simple to set up as clicking 5 times with a mouse!

The main article is here: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9010139&pageNumber=1

If you are still having issues with your iTunes in Vista after running the program with full admin privileges as suggested earlier, try getting the iTunes Repair Tool for Vista from Apple.

It can be downloaded here:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunesrepairtoolforvista10.html

For more info on it, check out apple's Knowledge Base here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305042

OK, on a funny note for this Saturday, while I was reading Chris Pirillo's blog, on the end of the first page I saw this photo:

This is amazing! For the past few days I was so busy starting up this site, promoting it all over the place, reading all possible tech blogs and forums I could find to get the best and freshest news and tips out to the masses that I did not even think that this is how my girlfriend probably sees me right now!

I promise I'll be more available as soon as Monday starts! It's a promise OK!

Straight from Chris Pirillo's site:

[...] since Windows Vista supports JPG wallpapers, you should no longer set your wallpaper through Internet Explorer (which converts images to BMP before they’re set to your desktop, totally nullifying any kind of improvement the Vista shell team did in respect to saving system resources). Here’s how I’d suggest doing it from this point forward.

1. When you find a suitable wallpaper image on the Web through Internet Explorer, don’t right-click and “Set as background” like you’ve done in the past.
2. Instead, right-click your desktop and “Personalize” - then select “Desktop Background” from the list of options in that panel.
3. Drag and drop the image you like in IE into the scrolling frame of the Desktop Background panel. It’ll automatically copy the image from your browser to your computer.
4. Consider browsing to a different folder on your machine before dragging and dropping images from IE to the Desktop Background applet.
5. From there, you can set the image as your wallpaper at will. It should remain in the JPG format, which is what you want.

If you like to tweak around Group Policy Settings, you may find this quite useful.

It's a huge 2495 Excel lines long Group Policy Reference for Vista ... A great thing to check out if you really want to know it all ;)

Get it by Clicking Here ...

Cheers.

Finally, a bright mind open to new things and the way things are done in Vista.

In this case, Brandon writes and makes a good point on why users will NOT just click OK to all those security warnings in Vista.

Here is his scenario:

1. Joe User starts up his Windows Vista machine and logs into an Administrator account with UAC [User Account Control] enabled.
2. Joe opens up Mail Program Express* - which automatically runs with reduced privileges because of UAC.
3. Joe clicks on a malicious HTML e-mail message that triggers a buffer overrun exploit against Mail Program Express, which executes some malicious code.  Perhaps this code includes instructions to delete important system files, muck with the registry, or access sensitive information about your computer or other users of the machine.
4. The attack against Mail Program Express succeeds, and the code is run - but the code fails to have any impact on the system because it is running in the context of Mail Program Express - which does not have Administrator privileges.

The user will never see the dialog Pop-up, everything is nice and secure.

Sure, there are many different scenarios, but I actually think that users will get used to the most common dialogs and why they usually pop-up, therefore, when a dialog pops-up thanks to some malicious app trying to get administrative privileges, most users will be like "Hey, WTF? This is odd."

Also, in my comment to his great post, I expressed that I also Love that my Internet Explorer runs in even more secure and restricted environment, and if IE, or a code within, tries to get access to anything other than typical things a page might need to render properly, user will be warned and asked if such action should be allowed.

Try viewing a source of a page in notepad or DreamWeaver - IE will ask you if that's something that should be allowed or not.

Leave the UAC on guys! Not that it may, but it will save you from trouble one day.

Check out his great site: BrandonLive.com

If you want to make your Vista computer run faster, or if you just want to Tweak couple of settings to suit your needs, you have to check out TweakVi by Total Idea.

They were the ones who have, in my opinion, one of the nicest and best Tweaking utilities for XP - and this time around they do not disappoint with TweakVi either.

If you wonder how can someone develop such a great app just couple of days after the official Vista launch, and those big companies (Nero, Nokia's PC Suite, Apple [hello iTunes] etc.) are still struggling?

Answer is simple - they made it long time ago - and just perfected it. I used it while it was in Beta itself, on Vista Beta - and it worked quite nicely.

For more info go here: Total Idea's TweakVi page.

Don't you just hate when you can't have your RSS feeds presented to you immediately? Is the Vista SideBar's RSS Gadget too small and sucky for you as it is for me?

Well GREAT!

There is a simple solution afterall and it's called Feeds Plus.

With Feeds Plus, you can set some or all your feeds to pop-up a notification when there's an update. Clicking on the notification opens the feed for you to read.

To Get it and/or find out more go here:
http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/feedsplus.asp

Cool thing about this is that couple of Interns at Microsoft's IE RSS Team developed this. Nice! :)

Works for XP too ;) You just have to have IE7.

Also check: Microsoft Team RSS's Blog

Not that it is something huge - just interesting. Namely, couple of times I tried to copy some of my files file to another folder (especially if these were executable), this puzzling error Error 0x800704C8: "The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user-mapped- section open" jumped up...

After searching Google about this it seems there is no real answer about it... I did notice a trend within the forum posts of people referring to folder permissions?

Nice thing about it is that if you give it another shot by clicking "Try Again" it all works fine ...

I noticed that someone asked about this on Windows Shell Blog, but still there is no reply ... It can be found here for further reference: http://shellrevealed.com/forums/post/5228.aspx