Many of my readers now seem to have converted
to Vista so I thought it was about time I let you in on a lovely little application I came across and have been using for ages entitled 'Winbubbles'. This program is designed to help you quickly and easily customize Windows Vista installation by way of a small 350kb freeware download.
The URL to download the application directly is to long to easily print in this article so you are best of doing a search for it yourself; the quickest way I can suggest is to head to www.freewarefiles.com and do a search for Winbubbles or otherwise a quick Google search will locate it for you. After installing the application you will be able to customize pretty much any aspect of your Vista installation, including the following:
Windows Customizations:
- Enable Aurora Bootscreen guide - This will allow you to switch the boring old black Windows start-up screen for something a little more appealing.
· Add/Edit OEM Logo and information (this appears in system properties) as well as owners information
- Context Menu ' You can customize available options such as Move To, Copy To, Disk Clean-up options.
- Added screensaver properties - These include options for the Windows Bubble screensaver that do not normally have customisable settings.
- Alter system icons ' This allows you to remove the arrow normally present on shortcut icons.
- Add/Remove IE, Computer, Network, Control Panel, Public Folder icons from Desktop.
General Improvements:
- Optimised Start menu search
· Easily deactivate and reactivate Windows Aero - This can be useful if you want to tone down the graphical effects new in Vista, for example to increase performance or laptop battery life
· Clear Multiple Monitor Configuration
Security:
· Disable Task Manager, Autoplay, access to the control panel and other restricted areas - Very useful if others have use of your computer and you want to limit the amount they can change or access.
· Add Encrypt/Decrypt to Explorer´s Right-Click Menu (Context Menu) - Allows you to quickly and easily protect any sensitive files.
· Enable/Disable UAC - Quickly and easily allows you to turn off or on the User Account Control which pops up every time Windows detects you, or an application on your computer is trying to change a system setting; I personally turned this off the second I installed Vista.
- Disable the RUN command in Windows Start Menu and Task manager
- Hide whichever drives you wish on your computer ' Other handy feature for thos who have children or public access to the machine.
This is, of course, not a complete list as there are dozens of aspects of Windows Vista that can be customized from within this application - Think of the above as more of a taster. Whilst Winbubbles doesn't really introduce anything new and previously inaccessible, it does make the process of customizing your computer a lot easier and a lot more accessible to the average computer user and as such is certainly worth a go. Please note that this application is only compatible with Windows Vista, although there are dozens of similar applications already released for Windows XP such as Tweak UI which can be downloaded free of charge, again from the website www.freewarefiles.com
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