Today, I just heard some excellent news for all people using Vista, but especially for those waiting for the first service pack to come out and solve their issues with the new OS. I am sure we all have friends that don't want to hear about Vista until the first service pack comes out, so they should be glad too. Why? Here's the reason...


A few hours ago, Microsoft made Windows Vista SP1 RC Preview available for download on the MSDN homepage! Sounds great, isn't it? The bad part of the story is that you need to be a MSDN subscriber to download this latest preview of the first service pack for Vista, and since I don't have an account there, I'll tell you what can be found out on the MSDN homepage.

For now, things look just great, because "This new release of SP1 addresses reliability and performance issues, and provides support for new hardware and several emerging standards.", according to the Redmond giant.

Until the final release of the service pack is ready and available for all the users, we should wait and see... but if you are a MSDN subscriber and you are feeling confident in trying pre-release service packs, you could go here, check it out and share what you will experience with the rest of us, of course!

If somebody asks you how to take screenshots in Vista, the obvious answer would be to use the PrintScreen key. Taking things a bit further, I can tell you that you can also use Alt+PrintScreen to capture the active window/region from the desktop.

All right, all right, that's an ancient story, but what about using the new tool that comes with Vista, called the Snipping Tool? I am sure this sounds like something new, so let's find out more about it...

The Snipping Tool has 4 selection modes - free-form, rectangular, window and, of course, full screen. Now, I will show you how to start and use this small and handy tool.

- Press the Start Orb to bring up the Start menu.

- Type "snip" in the Search Box and press Enter to open the program. If you have installed programs with similar names, be sure that the Snipping Tool is highlighted.

- Open the New menu by pressing the arrow pointing down next to the New button and select the selection mode.

- Select the part of the screen that you want to capture.

- Use the highlighter or one of the pen tools to work on your shot.

- When finished, save your work and move on.

The best part comes here - the Snipping Tool can save PNG, GIF, JPEG and MHT files, as well as being able to instantly send your screenshot through email in an instant. Pretty useful for what many are calling "a useless tool", don't you think?

If you feel that Internet Explorer is moving slower and slower with each day, I can't advise you to change your browser, despite the fact this could work for you too. In time, I noticed that most people discover themselves what they denied to be true for a long time, and exactly the same happens with Web browsers.

I am not here to preach in the name of Firefox, Opera, Avant or any other browser out there. All I want to show you now is how to delete temporary data stored by Internet Explorer in a snap, without using any additional software. Are you ready?


<-234x60 Half Banner - left->- Since you are reading this article now, I suppose you are using a browser already. If that browser is not Internet Explorer, give IE a spin.

- Press Alt+T to show the Tools menu, and select Internet Options here.

- Right in the General tab, click on Delete from the Browsing History section.

- The Delete Browsing History window opens.

- Choose which item you want to delete, confirm your choice and it's all done!


Be sure not to remove your saved passwords if you didn't store them in a safe place, and also be careful not to delete your browser's history items if you didn't add all those interesting sites found in the last month to your Favorites, all right? Good luck!

One of Vista's new features that may come in really handy is its ability to encrypt files and folders, and if you want to remember this well, keep in mind these three letters:EFS (Encrypting File System). EFS is a feature enabled by default, but if you're not using it at all, or you don't want your kids to hide their unfinished homework from you, then disabling it could be a good idea, and we'll show you how to do it, as usual...


Before everything else, a little warning - we're going to change a value in the registry, so be very careful! If you do things right, there's no chance to happen something unwanted, but take all necessary precautions, especially be careful to decrypt encrypted folders before disabling this feature!

- Start the registry editor - simply tap Windows key+R and type "regedit" in the Run window.

- As soon as the registry editor opens, carefully go to the following location
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem.

- Locate the entry called NtfsDisableEncryption.

- Right click on it, and choose Modify.

- To disable EFS, enter 1, and to enable it again at a later time, get back here and change this value to 0.

- Restart the computer to apply changes.

That's all, we hope you'll find this trick useful, but be careful and use it wisely. After all, if it's not broken, you don't need to fix it, right? Good luck!

The All Programs menu gets in your way as soon as you press the Start Orb or tap the Windows key, and I am sure a lot of people wonder how to add their own folders to it. Since this wish isn't that hard to turn into reality, I decided to show you how to add custom folders to the All Programs menu, so here it goes...


- Right click the Start Orb to bring up its context menu.

- Choose Explore to add the new menu to the current user, or Explore All Users, to apply changes to all existing users.

- In the window that appears, click on the Programs folder to open it.

- Once the new window opens, left click Organize, and pick New Folder from the menu that appears.

- Type in a name for this new folder and press Enter when finished.

- Open the All Programs menu to see the changes in effect.

That's all, folks! Obviously, you can add anything you want to the new folder you have just created, as well as to create new ones, so go ahead and use this knowledge to enhance your Vista user experience. Good luck!