by Prasanna Vignesh
23. May 2007 21:59
Stretch your wallpaper across two displays.
We love our dual displays, but we don’t like staring at two instances
of the same image all day. Thankfully, Vista lets us stretch our
wallpaper across both displays quite easily. This was also possible in
XP, but it was not an intuitive process. Keep in mind, however, that
stretching an image across two displays obviously requires a picture
that is large enough to stretch all the way across both displays, so
you’ll need to add up the resolution of both displays and find an image
that is of those dimensions.
Right-click the desktop, select Personalize, and then Desktop
Background. Select your image, and then select the middle option for
“tile” to stretch it across both displays.
Turn off unneeded Windows features.
This one is self-explanatory. Do you need Tablet PC components
installed? Probably not, unless you are using a Tablet PC. So turn off
whatever you don’t need in the name of keeping your Windows install as
lean as possible.
Click Start, Control Panel, then under Programs at the bottom click
“Uninstall a Program.” In the left-hand pane you’ll see “Turn Windows
Features on or off.” Uncheck whatever you don’t need.
Enable Aero mouse pointers.
This is odd. Microsoft made new Aero-based mouse pointers for Vista,
but the default mouse pointer is the old 3D white scheme. To enable the
new mouse pointers and animations, right-click the desktop, select
Personalize, then Mouse Pointers. Click on the drop-down box under the
word Scheme, and select Windows Aero (system scheme). Click OK.
Make XP computers show up in your network map.
Vista uses a new protocol named Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) to
display a network “map” of all computers in a network, but the protocol
is only in Vista, so XP computers do not show up in this map.
Microsoft has generously released the software for XP, and it must be
installed on an XP machine for it to show up in the Vista map. Click
here to download the software for Windows XP SP2.
Mount a CD Image
Mounting a CD image is a basic feature of almost every operating system
package except for Microsoft Windows. Microsoft has never shipped this
feature in any version of Windows including Windows Vista. Mounting a
CD image is very useful when you have downloaded a .ISO cd image and
you do not want to waste the time or the media to burn a copy. Since
Windows Vista does not have this functionality built-in, you will need
to download a utility. One popular utility that will mount CD images is
called elby CloneDrive. Best of all, CloneDrive is free and easy to
use. Follow these steps to mount CD images in Windows Vista with
CloneDrive:
1. Visit elby Free Software and download a free
copy of CloneDrive.
2. Install CloneDrive just like any other application.
3. After it is installed you will see a new virtual drive appear in your Computer
drive list.
4. Right Click on the CloneDrive and select Virtual CloneDrive and then Mount.
5. Navigate to the .ISO file you want to mount and hit Open.
6. Your CD image is now mounted.
Enjoy!
Note: For more
Windows Vista Tips, Tricks &
Tweaks.
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