Windows Vista Lounge

No this is not some crazy tweak where you point compressed air, upside down, at your CPU or RAM chips to get better performance–although the latter is a great hack for cracking passwords…but I digress! Back to the point, speed up vista! Yes I like it and sometimes feel like it might never get to be the OS that XP turned out to be (stable, reliable, well established, blah blah). Microsoft is releasing  SP1, (cheer) and lowering prices to boost acceptance, and of course all new PC’s come with it in one flavor or another. Meanwhile there seems to be one inherent issue, it simply gets pokey when opening apps or doing anything resource intensive.

I tried something just to see if it would help, and it did (more than I expected it would). I turned off the Aero effects and simply chose the Vista theme instead. I like the menu’s better actually, those giant buttons were a bit much for me. Anyway, it made a notable difference for very little effort!

If you’re new to Vista and want to make the change or try other settings, here is a quick “How-to”

1. Right mouse click on your background

2. Select [Personalize]

3.  Select [Windows Color and Appearance]

4. Chose [Windows Vista Basic]

5. Click OK.

It may go into that windows trance where it everything goes black and white for a few secs. But afterwards it will flip back to normal, the menus will tighten up and overall things will be a bit more perky.

If this isn’t enough for your performance needs, please just go add as much RAM as you can afford and you will be fine

Anyone else got a tweak or tune up idea? Please post!

Finally, the service pack we all waited for, the one that would fix everything we struggled with in Vista! But wait, there is a catch!…This is not a full blown service pack. It’s an “RC” meaning release candidate and that is where things get interesting.

For those of us who went through the RC Versions of Vista in the beta program, we remember how this played out. Download it, install and go through all the tribulations but when the actual version is released, you have to UNINSTALL the RC service pack first! It may not be a big deal but then again, it could mean a lot of repeat work for you if you make config changes after the RC is on your machine.

As much as I like to be on the edge of the latest software, I recommend serious caution before slapping the RC Candidate on your Vista OS. Or at least wait until a few trial stories come out to see if your system or favorite software has a potential issue.

Now if only I could get that Office 2007 SP1 to stop reinstalling itself everytime I open Outlook…sigh.

They say, there is always one killer app that holds you from upgrading. In my case it has been the use of Paperport Software and the Visioneer strobe pro. I’m a big fan of the paperport software and they did recently release a beta version of the Vista drivers…so perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel. But in the meanwhile…it is extremely complicated to get the software or scanners to work.

I stopped by the Nuance Booth (They bought the Paperport Brand) and talked with them during a trade show. The attitude I got was, hey we just released version 11 and you should upgrade your hardware. Well gee, that’s an easy fix! But where is the challenge in that?

So I’ve actually tinkered with version 11 and the new beta drivers connecting a Strobe XP 200. And the best results have been, Paperport opens and will show my old files. OK that’s a plus. But can I scan something quick and easy?…so far, no.

For those unfamiliar with strobe scanners, they are small and activate when a document is inserted. So you don’t have to push buttons or load anything, it simply detect the edge of the paper, comes on, scans it and voila…done!

So yes, this was something I like and wanted to continue doing. Anyone out there got a full blown paperport and vista deployment working? If you are using flatbed scanners, please don’t respond. I am only interested in strobes and sheet-fed models.