VistaJuice

All rite all! Thanks all for comments and patience waiting for me to get back to Vista Juice.

I've been sick for about week and a half some long time ago when I wrote one of the posts below, but then after that I just got so busy I had no time to even check my email - and a lot less to write here.

Now, after getting back on my legs, finishing some web dev work for my clients, installing a new Xtreme N gigabit router from D-Link in my home network, and finishing BuckeyeCollisionAndGlass.com website for my girlfriend's uncle - I'm ready to find some spare time and get back to giving you some more Vista tips. If Adam Curry can find time to do a freakin' awesome podcast every single day, I guess I can manage to write a post or two making your lives in Vista more fun :)

Talking about fun - I HATE SONY - Again! :) That does not stop me buying computers from them, but nonetheless - I hate them. Even with the DVD they sent me with the "Express" Vista upgrade package - it took over 5 hours to get everything installed! I just thank God for Acronis True Image software - without which I would probably die. Finally after everything was installed and nicely configured on my girlfriend's computer - I created a nice 20 Gig image of clean Vista install with all drivers and usual apps on it. Boy does this save time when it comes to reinstalling Vista at some point in the future :)

So, without further yada yada bla bla ado - I'm gonna go and organize all of my little notes and links I gathered during the past month so I can start giving you new tips ASAP.

Also, I got a question in one of the comments is there a "How do I..." section on this site... Not really - but if you email me anything you want to know or need help on how to do at vistajuice@gmail.com - I'll try and help you out. If a question is of a general interest - I'll even post it here on the site.

Please - do not abuse the above email - I am not Microsoft Customer Support - so questions you can and should ask them please leave out of my mailbox - you know which questions etc. you should ask me - just use common sense :)

Oh, hey, one more thing, my good friends Sash and KingV at JunkNova.com got a really cool On-Line store open now - so you can get some really nice t-shirts, polo shirts, boxers, heck even thongs with their kewl logo imprinted! I'm getting my shirt this week :)

Thanks and see ya in a jiffy.

I was running around all over Vista trying to get my Hibernation mode back on - since for some strange reason it disappeared all by itself. An even stranger thing is that I could not pinpoint where the setting which controls it really is. I knew it was around Power Configuration somewhere but dammit - no sign of it for me tonight.

It turns out there's a really easy way to do this, so if you want to turn the hibernation on or off, simply do the following:

1. Click Start, All Programs, and then right click on "Command Prompt".
2. From the context menu click on "Run as administrator".
3. If User Account Control prompts you to allow the action, click on Continue.
4. In the command prompt window, type "powercfg –h off" (or "on" without the quotes) followed by Enter button.
4. Close the Command Prompt window and you're done :)

Via: http://ezinearticles.com/?Windows-Vista-Top-10-Tips-and-Tricks&id=461195">Ezinearticles.com

I disappeared again for couple of days - I got stuck in Ubuntu Linux. For some time now I've been seeing on YouTube and other sites people comparing Ubuntu with Beryl and Vista's looks so I decided to get my hands dirty a bit and see it for myself.

I installed Ubuntu 6.10, installed Nvidia drivers (which work better on Linux than under Vista, lol), installed Beryl and went on playing around.

I must admit - I liked what I saw. Vista does have cool transparencies, fairly pretty theme and icons, and DreamScene (which I never use). Ubuntu on the other hand looks a bit old-school-like. You know, like XP looks once you've experienced Vista for couple of hours. With Beryl - I must admit I had more fun in Linux than ever before. I love the effects, especially the burning of the windows once you minimize them, and I love how easy is to spin around the desktop "cube" and switch to other virtual desktops with a simple movement of the mouse. It is definitely something I'd like to see on Vista.

The best part is that the whole Beryl system is so configurable that there is little it cannot do.

I really love Ubuntu (since long time ago even before Beryl). I love how everything flows with ease in Ubuntu (no hiccups anywhere), and the thing I love the most is a memory footprint once everything is loaded under Linux (whole OS, my stuff, Gnome Desktop and Beryl Manager - total of 200MB of RAM taken, 0MB of Swap used). This definitely beats Vista which with everything loaded up leaves me with a bit of a bloated system, some swap space used, and about 1GB of RAM used.

So, what's the outcome: I am gonna keep both systems on my computer.

When I am in Linux I miss pretty Windows orbs, my beautiful sidebar clock, Office 2007, Dreamweaver and Photoshop - not to mention my SlingPlayer and Microsoft Money 2007.

When I am in Windows, I miss the eaten up RAM (very much so), Super fast boot time of Ubuntu, and yes - I do miss being able to spin my virtual cube and a cool access to my other virtual desktops.

It's a tie - Vista has won my heart since looooong time ago, but Ubuntu is just so slick.

For those who do not know what I'm talking about (Beryl), check out overly long and a bit annoying video below. You'll get the point.

For those Linux/Windows fans who just wait to comment and wage a war of the OSs - remember I was mostly interested in comparing the LOOKS of the two systems - not all other goodies.

Also, I discovered an amazing thing - If you put the "Dawn of Ubuntu" wallpaper in your Vista - you will discover it makes the whole experience just so much better. I finally found the wallpaper I've been searching for for the longest time ever. Take a look:

Points of Interest: Beryl, Ubuntu Site, Dawn of Ubuntu Wallpaper

P.S> Oh, and tomorrow Ubuntu 7.04 is coming out so I'm gonna install that version and see what's new. Hopefully this version detects my wireless card out of the box - and it does not completely forgets it exists after the on-line system update... :) HA!

I just want to thank Dennis Castaldi for being the first to officially support VistaJuice!

I just happened to glance over to the right side of the site where our ChipIn plug-in is located and I noticed we now have a total of $10.69 ... Sorry I haven't seen it earlier but it's not these types of things happen every day :)

Before his donation we only had a nice and fun contribution from our friends at JunkNova.com in the amount of $0.69 cents :)

Thanks Dennis - your PayPal donation is really appreciated!

Petar

As you may know, I was playing a lot with Ubuntu lately. At first I was really amazed that the moment I installed it everything worked without a hitch; or so I thought. This is for all of you who think Vista's bad with drivers - so is Linux. More on that at some later time, let's talk about backup now :)

I did not want Vista to die on me while playing with Ubuntu, so I decided to use integrated backup. You go to the Control Panel and choose Backup and Restore Center. Click on Back up Computer, set it to where you would like a backup to be created at and voila - the fastest and best way to backup your OS is in progress.

I must say, I am amazed at how fast this went. Within 10 minutes the whole computer, all of my documents and everything was backed up! Surely this will depend on how much stuff you have going on but it is faster than any other backup software I've ever used.

To restore the backup, boot from your Vista installation DVD, instead clicking the Install button, rather go to Repair Your Computer on the lower left. This will take you to a set of tools available to you where one of them is to restore a system from a backup.

Following through is quite easy and self explanatory, program will detect the external drive/dvd where Vista backed itself up, and let you restore a system.

There is a catch - or at least there was for me. Before getting Vista back on the system I went in and moved my partitions around, I removed that Sony system partition in the beginning of the drive and designated the whole disk as a big NTFS partition so Vista can enjoy. Then, when I was about to restore the system, there was a nice little checkbox saying something like "Restore the hard drive partitions to the state saved in the backup". There was NO way to uncheck the box!!! So, after a very quick System Restoration (10-minutes or so), my system was back On-Line with one dumb problem - I again had that Sony partition in front of my Vista partition since Vista restored itself exactly at where it was when the backup started.

What does this mean - well it means that I cannot restore my backup where I want - but rather where Vista wants it... I do not know why I was unable to uncheck the box and restore the system on that one new partition I created but I really hope that changes soon. Maybe the function still does not exist or something, I do not know. It is very strange since the backup itself is not sector based but rather file based (just like Vista's own installation image).

The main point is - Vista's backup is GREAT, FAST, and quite Reliable - but it is made for people who do not play much with resizing partitions, installing other systems etc. It is made for novice users who would in most case scenarios want to restore a backup to where it came from anyway - and it does it's job well.

It seems that some people find some useful information on Vista Juice which really makes me happy. What's even better is that they go a step further and make a nice donation which really does make me feel really nice and puts me in an even nicer mood for writing.

So, without further ado THANK YOU:

1. Neil Mills for a $10 donation
   
   and a really huge thanks to
   
2. Erin Brophy for a $20.69 donation!

You just gotta love the number coming from Erin :)

Hey, maybe OCC can make us a Vista Juice bike, wouldn't that be nice.

I heard about the T-mobile and Vista promo long time ago. If you have a Vista computer, at any T-mobile HotSpot location you can get free WiFi access which will last till the end of April (which is soon).

I never had a need to use it, but today I stopped by Starbucks and decided to go On-Line. What a nice surprise when I was granted free Internet within 2 minutes. All I had to do was create an account - that's it. This is not one of those trials where you have to remember to cancel or they'll bill you and such - it's just nice and simple - sign up and it gives you free access till the end of this month (April 07). I wish I had used this before - I'd be more in Starbucks than in Panera Bread (though Panera has completely free WiFi)

So, if you got Vista - get out of the house a bit, the weather is great, and enjoy the free Internet in nearest Starbucks ;)

Hey, it seems that the most attractive thing in Linux desktop environment (the super awesome Beryl) is coming slowly to Vista.

Not that Beryl is being ported to Vista or anything, but thanks to Joe Shepherd who kindly pointed me in the right direction, there seems to be a bit limited but still fun 3D environment for Windows users as well called Yod'm 3D (Yet anOther Desktop Manager 3D).

It is quite limited since it is quite young at the moment, it allows you to move the virtual desktops around (only horizontally though), and some other features. Fun to try but it does need a lot of work.

I hope these guys keep up the good work or that someone ports Beryl to Windows environment. It really is a huge productivity boost as well - not just the eye candy - trust me on this!

Thanks Joe!

http://chsalmon.club.fr/index.php?en/Yod-m-3d-abou...

I mentioned long time ago why restore points in Vista take up so much space. Now, after using Vista for quite some time - I realize that I am missing about 15GB of my 120GB hard drive somewhere.

By default Vista allocates 15GB of hard drive space for system restore points. If you like to experiment with new drivers and software like I do - then you should definitely leave that right where it is, but if you just simply use your computer for day-to-day purposes - you can optimize this and have some more HDD space for your other things.

LifeHacker has a very nice writeout about this, and here's what they say:

To recover some of that System Restore disk space, start up Vista's command line as an administrator, and run vssadmin list shadowstorage to see the current allocation. To change it, use:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[drive]: /for=[drive]: /maxsize=[size]

That is, to limit System Restore to 2 gigabytes on the C: drive, use:

vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /for=C: /maxsize=2GB

Of course, limiting System Restore's drive footprint also limits how far back it can store points, so do so carefully. Here's more on rolling back Windows with System Restore.

Thanks Gina!

Via: LifeHacker

In the last post I wrote about a nice hidden little feature in Vista which lets you change the amount of space used by System Restore in Vista.

While some of you might need to do such thing, you should know what the consequences of such action are as well as the alternatives to it.

I knew this all along - that's why I will never limit the amount restore uses on my system, but it didn't cross my mind that some users might run to take action so they can get more space back on their drives. You may be risking more than you are gaining since system restore in Vista works a bit different than in XP and it is very closely connected to your system backups and "previous versions" of files you have.

Not to reinvent the wheel as my Computer Science teacher Fred Smith from UIC long time ago used to say, Ed Bott has a really nice and in depth article about this which I think all of you who are considering changing the amount system restore uses should definitely read before you do so.

Check out: ZDNet.com