TO-Tech Blog

The little video I created right after Vista’s launch in mid-January generated quite a number of comments (75 so far). The video was based on my surprise that the cheap PC I installed Vista Ultimate Edition on actually supported Aero Glass effects even though I did not have a dedicated video card and was using shared video memory. It generated a bunch of questions such as:

• hello, can you please tell me how you were able to get Aero on vista to work like that? my computers specs arent the greatest and i cant get aero to show up under the management stuff… if you could help me out i would really appreciate it! unlinke your video, i have a dedicated graphics card BUT its an XP card and has no vista support/drivers
• Hey, i got vista how do u perform areo glass. what do you press. hey did the vista upgrade advisor say you needed to upgrade your video card or was it cool with it?

My understanding is Vista either has support for the graphics subsystem or it doesn’t. Not all dedicated cards are supported. Nor are all integrated graphics chipsets with adequate shared RAM supported. You should check the vendor’s website for further information.

If your graphics subsystem is supported, Vista turns on Aero Glass features such as 3-D Flip (demonstrated in the video). You press the Windows-key and the Tab-key together to display this. Press it repeatedly to flip through the windows. The pop-up mini-windows on the bottom of the screen are displayed by hovering over the application tabs in the Windows taskbar (usually on the bottom of the screen).

Windows advisor did not say anything about needing to upgrade my onboard graphics chipset using shared memory (it would probably help though :-).

If you read through Microsoft’s…

How do I change the behavior of the User Account Control message?

…you’ll find that only Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate Edition users can change certain aspects of UAC for non-administrator accounts. This leaves out both the Home and Business Edition users out in the cold. This, IMHO, is just a bad idea and mystery to me. I also don’t understand why BitLocker wasn’t provided at least to Business Edition users (again Enterprise and Ultimate Editions have this feature). Why aren’t Business Edition users (at the very least) given these security related options?

BTW, if you want a good encryption option for Home or Business Editions, take a look at TrueCrypt 4.3a (released in May 2007). You may find it something you can use on PCs running that version of Windows.

Personally, I think Microsoft should follow Apple’s philosophy and just have a single edition and stop causing Edition Confusion.

One of the Windows Vista features I was most looking forward to last year was Sideshow: A secondary mini-screen that can be used with the primary screen. Although it can be implemented in various ways, I was specifically looking forward to its use as a small screen on the lid of a notebook PC (see image taken from Microsoft.com of an Asus notebook). So far, however, none of the tier 1 notebook manufacturers (Dell, HP, etc.) have produced a notebook with Sideshow. And, for that matter, we haven’t seen any products that attach to the PC that take advantage of Sideshow either. I found a site called SideShowDevices. But, it is pretty sparsely populated. So, what happened? Too expensive to produce? No software to use it? No one else but me wants it? Hmm.

July’s Patch Tuesday brought a nice little surprise (though that didn’t last long): Among the list of optional Windows Vista updates was an HP driver for the Photosmart 7700 printer series (I have an old 7760). The patch was dated June 10. I have no idea why it didn’t show up in the list until tonight since other Vista updates have arrived between Patch Tuesdays.

Unfortunately, two tries and a reboot in between was not enough to get the driver to install. Each attempt failed.

I guess HP finally got around to releasing printer drivers for Windows Vista in April. I got around to taking a look to see if my old Photosmart 7760 was finally supported and, yet, found it has both a new driver (April 2007) and an uninstaller for, I guess drivers installed in 2000/XP previous to an upgrade (May 2007). However, take a look at this note from HP regarding this driver…

This download includes a Print Driver only. This driver makes it possible to use the basic functions for the printer. HP will not be providing a Full Featured Vista Software and Driver for this product; therefore, some functionality may be lost when you use this product with Windows Vista.

I can see why a lot of people are choosing to stay with Windows XP where they have full driver support.

The standard Stand By, Turn Off, and Restart options presented by both Windows XP and Windows Vista aren’t the only options we have to shutdown the PC. The other option is Hibernate. And, it works surprisingly reliably with both Windows XP and Vista. Startup seems to be faster since it restores all processes that were running eliminating many of those annoying slow start-up processes. And, since the application windows last run are popped right back up, you can get back to work faster than if you started from a blank slate.

Hibernate doesn’t require a trickle charge like Suspend. So, you can turn off a power strip and completely remove power to your PC, its display, and other peripherals. This means that the power wasted on your various giant power bricks is removed and also cuts down on waste heat generation. I’ve started following Green Technology items as it relates to techies on my new blog GreenTechies.com too.

Getting Hibernate to appear in Windows’s shutdown window has been hit and miss for me. So, I just have the hardware power button assigned start the Hibernate process. You can find the Windows XP procedure listed below. You can still force a shutdown by pressing and holding the power button for 5 seconds or more if you run into a problem. And, of course, pulling the A/C cord or battery works in an emergency.

• Start
• Control Panel
• Power Options
• Hibernate (tab)
• Enable hibernation (check box)
• Advanced (tab)
• When I press the power button on my computer: (list) Hibernate

I copied over a bunch of photos and the two AVI video files that I recorded during a conference I attended this week to my notebook. This morning I noticed that the Photo screen saver I use displayed the AVI files as well as the JPEG images as part of the rotating photos displayed in the screen saver. The video was played with audio turned off.