Things you can do in Vista: and please don't comment that you could do these in Windows 3.1, I'm not saying you cannot, it's just that I've only just found them in Vista.
Search
I have mentioned before that you can bang the windows button, start typing a search term and press enter and it will run the search. There are a few more useful things it can do:
- Enter the name of a program and it will run the program
- Enter a UNC directory path such as \\server\files and it will open explorer up in that folder
- Enter the name of a popular website such as petersblog.org and it will open said website (if the server is up that is).
- Enter the name of a control panel applet (eg. Services) and it will open: after one of the annoying confirmation dialogs but without having to navigate through the control panel.
You can index files on a network server but you have to download a plugin to do it.
Up a Bit
The Vista Explorers address bar has copied one of my favourite features from servant salamander: the path to a folder is displayed something like:
Program Files > Microsoft > Office > Blah
and you can click on any one of the folders in the path to change to that folder.
I'm still using Salamander...
Favourites
Again in Explorer but also in the File Open/Save dialogs, you can drag and drop folders into the list of favourites on the left. You can't drag them from the address bar though 
Virtual PC
I normally use Vmware for SVT but I decided to try Microsoft's VirtualPC for two reasons:
- I wanted to run Vista in a virtual machine and I figured VirtualPC may be more lenient in regards to licences etc (using the licence that came with the PC which I think is ok).
- Vmware has started to annoy me with the ugly way it handles networking.
- Vmware is a fine product, I just feel Microsoft have the inside knowledge to make virtualisation work better, both by hacking Virtual PC AND by hacking Vista.
Anyway, I used the Dell Vista reinstall CD to set up the Virtual Machine and it installed fine. I created an undoable disk so I can test setup programs and then roll the virtual machine back to it's virgin state. Lovely. Never, Ever release a setup program without testing it in a virgin OS installation in a virtual machine.
The Virtual Vista seems quite snappy although it doesn't run Aero and it doesn't seem to support USB devices like vmware does.
More Programs
The way Vista displays 'All Programs' in a silly little list box rather than a pop-out menu is slightly annoying as you are forever scrolling. You can increase the size of the start menu and hence the silly list box in the customisation settings for the start menu (right click taskbar/properties/Start Menu).
Once you've found your program you can always right click it and select 'Pin to Start Menu' so that it appears on the initial Start Menu, in the profuse amount of space you have now given it.
Peter's Moblog
