Recently in Windows Vista Category

I can remember my enthusiasm for early versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition and the promise of an integrated home theater experience built into Windows. One of the best things Microsoft did with Windows Vista was to include that Media Center experience as part of Vista, not just as a special version of the OS. The thing I didn't like about old versions of Media Center was the need for bulky desktop systems that took up tons of space and needed a permanent home in my home theater. What Microsoft did in making Windows Media Center available on most consumer systems was allow me to have a highly portable home theater experience from something like the 1.73 kilogram (3.81lbs) HP dv2.

HP sent me a dv2 to test out. I was initially interested only in the portability coupled with enough power to get work done. What I found instead was a machine that just might be the ultimate portable Windows Media Center system.

So what makes the dv2 the ultimate ultra-portable home theater PC?

Every time I launch my browser the window is off-screen. I can't move it because I can't see it. How can I get my browser window back on my screen?"

Having a window open off of your screen can be infuriating if you don't know how to fix it. I once had my email program launching off-screen and thought it might drive me nuts. Fortunately, there's an easy solution to get your window back on screen with a couple of quick keyboard commands.

"I just bought a new notebook computer. Can I move all the programs from my desktop PC to my notebook without needing to reinstall?"

The short answer to your question is, yes. Most of the time you can move programs from your old computer to your new computer. In some cases, when you move applications between two comptuers, installation will be required because of the way that particular application works. At the very least you will reduce the number of programs you need to re-install. The trick to making this work is you need to purchase some additional software to move programs between two computers.

"How do I convert BMP to JPG?"

There are at least 1000 solutions for converting BMP files to JPG. Some of the options provide more control over conversion of BMP files to JPG. Some image converters work slightly better than others. Some image file converting software is easier to use than others. I'll start with the image editor included on your computer and then suggest some alternatives.

"How can I install Windows 7 from the .iso download from Microsoft?"

The Windows 7 .ISO file is basically a DVD in the format of a file on your hard drive. If you downloaded the Windows 7 .ISO, you need to burn it to DVD before you can install it on your computer. Once you have the DVD, you can simply boot from your newly created Windows 7 disk and follow the steps for the installation.

Burn a ISO to DVD

One of my favorite ISO burning solutions is ImgBurn. It's free and keeps things simple. After installing ImgBurn, simply choose the option to Write image file to disc. Browse to the location of the Windows 7 .ISO file on your hard drive. With your blank DVD in your DVD burner, burn Windows 7 to the DVD.

Install Windows 7

Once you have a DVD burned, simply reboot your computer, boot from the DVD and follow the instructions to install Windows 7.

"I bought a 64-bit computer with Windows XP 32-bit installed. Now I want to upgrade from 32-bit Windows XP to 64-bit Vista. I have tons of applications on here and I'd rather not wipe my hard drive and start over. Is it possible to do the upgrade or do I need to do a clean install of Windows Vista 64?"

Under most circumstances, this is the type of upgrade I'd never do. Too many potential headaches are likely going from Windows XP to Windows Vista in general. Switching to 64-bit compounds the possible problems. xyHD.tv has a straightforward tutorial on upgrading XP 32-but to Vista-64, with the catch that you probably want to install Vista 32 before you go all the way. Most important part of the process - backup your files before you begin. A good rule of thumb in any operating system install, but especially important when you're attempting something like this. Follow the steps to upgrade from 32-bit Windows XP to Vista 64-bit at xyHD.tv.

I'm always trying to eek out a few extra minutes from my laptop battery at airports, airplanes, coffee shops, and the other random places I go where power isn't readily available. A few quick tweaks will generally yield as much as an extra hour of battery life.

1) Adjust Your Power Plan - most laptops have 3 basic power plans: High Performance, Power Saver, and something either called Balanced or the brand name's recommended settings. When you're on battery power only, switching to Power Saver slows down your processor and typically dims your screen, automatically reducing the draw on your laptop battery.

2) Turn off WiFi - WiFi is one of the biggest drains on your battery. If you're surfing you need it, but if you're just typing something, listening to music, editing photos, or any of the other offline activities you might do with a computer, you can get an extra 30 minutes simply by turning off your WiFi until you need it.

3) Dim Your Screen - Screen brightness is the second biggest culprit in battery drain. Lower your screen brightness to a point where you can still easily see but is far below maximum. I've found this easily extends my battery life by a minimum of 20 minutes. Setting your screen to turn off when you're not doing anything for extended periods is well worth it. When I do need to render video on battery power, I set this number to 1 minute so that more battery life is dedicated to necessary activities.

4) Go to Sleep - If your computer is inactive, letting Sleep kick in is a great way to save battery life. Most of the time your computer will wake up quickly when you're ready to refocus your attention, but while it's sleeping battery consumption reduces to a trickle. The important thing to remember is not to keep waking your laptop up until you actually need it.

5) Unplug USB Devices - All USB devices draw some power when connected to your computer. Things like your cell phone may even trickle charge drawing additional power from your battery. Keeping USB devices disconnected while you're on battery power reduces the overall drain.

Applying these tips to one of the power settings and then saving the changes makes it easy to switch settings without needing to make individual changes each time you switch between AC power and battery power. If guaranteed power is what you need, get a longer life 12-cell battery or carry a second (charged) battery with you wherever you go.

HP recently produced a video (which I was paid to shoot and edit) on understanding all the power options on your HP notebook. The video readily applies to extending battery life on almost any laptop. If you're curious about how to configure power settings on your laptop, this is a great introduction.

The home theater PC market has been rather dull for several years. Sure you can get a sound card with 7.1 surround sound, but they've generally been noisier than I'd want in my own home theater. You can purchase video cards that output to an HDTV and support HDCP, but the experience hasn't been on par with using home theater components. At Computex 2008, AMD is showing off a couple of new boards from MSI that change the game in important fundamental ways.

First up AMD's 780 chipset supports Blu-ray and other HD video playback through integrated video on the motherboard. Nobody else can currently do this - Intel drops frames. Couple this with the MSI boards integrated component and HDMI out and you've got ease of use in getting the video portion of your PC signal easily to your television, without the nonsense of converting DVI to HDMI. You can of course still add a separate video card, but for normal home theater use it would not be necessary.

The second key thing MSI and AMD have done is create something that grows with your audio needs. 2.1 surround (pre-amp) is included on the sound card with either analog outputs or digital. You can grow that to either 5.1 or 7.1 using an add-on card that easily extends your audio channels (That's the board in the front of the picture). The board seated on the motherboard provides amplified 5.1 surround. Audio uses a D2Audio chip on the motherboard to prevent extraneous noise.

A final component of this system is an ultra-quiet cooling system (pictured below). You're more likely to hear noise from your Blu-ray drive than you are from the fans keeping this entire thing cool. Best of all, I have it on good authority from a source at MSI that all this will be on the market by June 15, 2008 and you should be able to build a system (minus Blu-ray player) for under $1000.

The Windows Quick Launch bar, those little icons to the right of the start button, is over 10 years old. In that time, Microsoft has done little to enhance it's functionality. You can add dozens of Quick Launch items if you want to, but they all require a mouse click to activate. Windows Vista adds a new feature to the Quick Luanch bar — keyboard shortcuts. For the first 10 items (and who really needs more than 10?) you can use the Windows key + the corresponding number key of the sequence to easily launch the application you want without ever taking your fingers from the keyboard.

For instance, in the image below Windows key + 1 launches Outlook, Windows key + 2 launches Firefox, all the way up to Windows key + 9 launching Quicken. If there were a tenth item on the list, Windows key + 0 would launch it.

If you don't use Windows Vista, here's some more Windows key shortcuts to save you time. You can also create your own shortcuts for anything using additional software.

Download Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows XP may be long in the tooth, but it's certainly not dead yet. If you do only one thing to overhaul the current state of your Windows XP machine, download Windows Live Photo Gallery. This barely exposed update for the baked in Windows photo management tools is one of the most useful upgrades to your Windows user experience. An improved photo import makes this a worthwhile download all on its own. Photo management is upgraded to include views sorted by date and tags (a new tagging tool helps you ID your photos for grouping all pictures of a particular person, event, or location). Simple photo editing for red-eye removal, crops, and adjusting levels handles most common image fixes. If you happen to have a Windows Live Spaces account, there are additional features to publish direct from Windows to your Space or build slideshows for publishing to your Space. Download this free upgrade to the built-in Windows photo management experience and you'll be looking at your images in a whole new way. (The same features also improve Vista) [Windows XP/Vista $0.00]

Windows Vista took what seems like a giant leap backward in Disk Defragmenter software from what was available in Windows XP. I believe both versions are a feature-limited version of Diskeeper, however, the Windows Vista version is so hobbled as to render it practically useless. Even though I run the Vista Disk Defragmenter software weekly, two alternatives (Diskkeeper and DiskMagik)showed my drive remains highly fragmented. This means the Vista Disk Defragmenter isn't doing its job, which ultimately means my computer's performance is suffering.

Here's what the interface for the Windows XP Disk Defragmenter looks like:

Download AutoRuns

While the name AutoRuns sounds more like a laxative than a system utility, this is one app that everyone should have in their Windows tool kit. AutoRuns takes the on board Windows MSConig utility to the next level, going far beyond the basics in seeing exactly what's starting up each time you boot your system. Find out all the nitty gritty details about what launches during the boot process and in what order. You can tweak application launching to precisely control what applications, browser helper objects, Windows services, and 3rd party utilities are allowed to start as Windows boots. This comes in handy for helping optimize the Windows boot time, keeps unneeded services from launching when you don't want them, and is also a handy detective tool for discovering malware hidden on your system. If the interface looks overwhelming, consider switching to the mode that hides the official Microsoft signed entires, so you only see startup items that aren't part of Windows. [Windows 9x/2k/XP/Vista $0.00]

I've been recommending AccountLogon as my favorite password manager for Windows for several years. I like the simplicity of how it works. It does one thing really well - logs you in to Web pages. At least it did one thing really well until until I switched to using Vista full time. AccountLogon is lousy on Windows Vista because it doesn't work well with the browser. It's been ages since the developer released an update and the performance in Vista shows.

"I tired out Windows Live OneCare and now I can't figure out how to get rid of it. What do I need to do to uninstall Windows OneCare from my computer?"

Ideally you should be able to remove Windows Live OneCare simply by going to Add or Remove Programs (aka Programs and Features in Windows Vista). If that doesn't work, Microsoft also offers a tool to help in uninstalling OneCare from your system.

Go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs

Scroll through the list of installed programs on your computer until you find Windows Live OneCare in the list. Select the program in the list of installed programs and click the Uninstall button.

If this does not work, you can use the Windows Live OneCare Uninstaller OneCare Cleanup instead. Just download OneCare CleanUp directly from Microsoft via that link and remove OneCare from your computer.

Derek writes with two questions about codecs:

"1) Is there any utility or method of determining what Codecs are loaded to XP and whether they are the latest version or most suitable to use?

2) Is there a suggested set or suite to cover all situations? Either open source or commercial."

If there were a set of codecs that covered all situations and tool that actually made maintaining codecs on your system easy, I'd have far less to write about. Instead, there are a convoluted series of components that will help you make the most of a frustrating situation. Here is a set of solutions that will get you close to keeping everything up to date:

If you try and share Windows Media Player content in Windows Vista, you might get the following warning:

Your network is a public network. Sharing is disabled to protect your privacy. If you consider this to be a private network, change network settings.

You can fix this by clicking on the Networking button on the warning, then clicking Customize next to the information about your network to change from Public to Private.

You'll then need to go back to Windows Media Player and turn on sharing.

Download Fresh UI

Tweaking your Windows user interface to make it function the way you want is the goal of many software apps. The free Microsoft TweakUI, available for every version of Windows is something I'm never without, but it never goes far enough in allowing me to customize all the Windows system and user interface settings. Fresh UI helps tweak where TweakUI falls short, offering a long list of Windows customizations for every version of Windows from Windows 98 forward. All tweaks and optimizations are organized by category and offer detailed explanations so you know what exactly is getting changed. The only shortcoming of Fresh UI is that it doesn't include a way to roll back to the setting before your change. If that's a feature you need, you may need to consider other tweaking tools. [Windows 9x/2k/XP/Vista $0.00]

Don writes, "I have set up my old Window XP Pro PC to my home theater system and it works fine. However, I would like to control the PC via RDC so I do not need a monitor or have to buy a video card to hook to my TV. I will RDC from my new Vista machine and have the music play through the Home theater and not the Vista PC. Is this possible? When i remote into the XP machine, all the sound goes to the Vista machine and not the home theater."

By default Remote Desktop brings the sounds from the remote PC to the local PC, which is useful if you are truly working remotely but not ideal in your case. To keep the sounds on the remote PC playing through your home theater, you need to change one of the RDC options before you connect.

One of the best ways you can speed up Windows Vista is with ReadyBoost. This is basically a fast USB thumb drive Vista uses as some extra RAM for operating system functions. You need a minimum of a 2GB stick in order to notice any kind of speed bump, but if you use a 4GB USB drive you'll get even better performance.

An option to configure your USB drive for ReadyBoost is typically available as soon as you stick the drive in a USB slot.

If you don't see the AutoPlay menu pop up, you can access the setup by right-clicking the drive in Windows Explorer, choosing Properties, and clicking on the ReadyBoost tab.

Set the option to Use this device and either accept the Windows recommended default or use the entire thumb drive. You won't be able to use this drive for storing anything, but the speed boost is well worth using the drive for ReadyBoost. If you need a thumb drive for storage, go buy a second drive.

A few things to keep in mind - you need a USB 2.0 thumb drive for ReadyBoost to work and you also need a thumb drive rated for ReadyBoost. The easiest way to verify this second criteria is to buy a ReadyBoost certified thumb drive from SanDisk or one of the other thumb drive manufacturers. You're not limited to using thumb drives - a Compact Flash, SD, or other removable memory device will also work.

"Can I use the Xbox 360 Live Vision camera as a Webcam with my Windows computer?"

In a word, yes. You can use the Xbox Live Vision camera as a webcam with Windows XP or Windows Vista. After you connect the Live Vision camera to a USB port on your computer, the Found New Hardware Wizard should launch automatically. Choose the option to let Windows Update find the driver automatically. Once the driver is installed, the Live Vision camera should work with any software that supports USB cameras, like Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, etc.

Note: The Xbox Live Vision camera does not have a built-in microphone like many webcams. If you want to use it to chat with both audio and video, you will need to connect a microphone to your computer as well.

Download Local Cooling

The power management built into Windows doesn't offer much customization in what gets turned on or off on your system under various configurations. I occasionally find it useful for conserving my laptop battery life, but often Windows power management is more hindrance than help. Local Cooling offers a solid alternative to Windows power management, with a number of handy features. The app automatically turns off your monitor, shuts down or hibernates your PC, and offers a very important option to suspend shutdown when specific applications are running. That last feature is a must because I've lost information due to aggressive power conservation features in the past. I don't necessarily buy into the purported greenhouse gas reduction estimates generated by Local Cooling, but it does offer statistics regarding energy reduction over time, including a competitive feature where you can compare your power savings against the community of other Local Cooling users. [Windows 9x/XP/Vista $0.00]

Download LogonStudio Vista

As one of the first things you see when you boot your computer, the Logon screen for Windows is possibly one of the first things I grow tired of after the newness of the operating system wears off. Fortunately, software apps like LogonStudio make it easy to add some style to the Logon screen. The Windows Vista version of Stardock's logon page tweaking app is now available for download, along with a ton of free designs to update the look and feel of your screen. If you're still on Windows XP, there's a version of LogonStudio for you as well. And of course, you can always tweak your Windows user account picture with something more personal to add some flare to each username that logs in. [Windows Vista $0.00]

Last night at approximately 11pm I decided I wanted to watch a movie. I don't have cable at my apartment in Los Altos and I've already watched all my HD-DVDs, so watching something from a download service seemed like my best option. I have never tried Amazon Unbox Video previously, so I decided to give their 99 cent rentals a try. Instead of watching a movie last night, I wasted time troubleshooting an error message during the Amazon Unbox Video install process.

I stepped through the purchase process, downloaded the video client, and started the installation on my Windows Vista Ultimate laptop. This laptop plays back HD-DVDs so I figured it should have no problem with 800 kbps video. Partway through the install, I get the following error message:

Error: -1603 Fatal error during installation.

Consult Windows Installer Help (Msi.chm) or MSDN for more information.

I tried the install several more times with no success - even after rebooting my machine shutting down all background applications to avoid any potential conflicts. Still no luck with installing Amazon Unbox Video. The online help didn't quickly turn up any obvious solution, so I submitted a request via email to solve the problem.

This morning, I get two possible solutions in my inbox:
1) Right-click the installer and choose Run as administrator
This solution did not work in my case.

2) Register vbscript.dll with Windows Vista
To do this, you type Windows Key + R on the keyboard and type cmd into the Run dialog before clicking OK.

Next you type the following commands:
cd c:\windows\system32
regsvr32 vbscript.dll

This results in an (apparently expected) error message like the one below:

To quote Amazon support on this error: "The output may indicate that it was unable to connect to the registration server, but you should now be able to install the program."

This solution worked and I now have Amazon Unbox Video installed on my Windows Vista Ultimate system, but what a lousy user experience. If Amazon wrote better code, I'd never have to do either of these things. A good user experience would result in Windows Vista prompting me to elevate privileges when necessary during the install. A good user experience should register the DLLs I need to make the app work without resorting to manual intervention at the command line.

I'm probably just bitter that almost 12 hours after I attempted to rent a movie from Amazon Unbox Video, I'm still waiting to watch it, but I'd really like to see this stuff "just work".

Windows Vista Media Player Gadget

I'm not completely sold on the whole Gadgets thing for the Windows Vista Sidebar, but there are a few I'm finding it hard to live without. The Media Player gadget is definitely a must, because I have no use for having Windows Media Player open all the time. This is a handy intermediary, giving me quick access to playing music, browse my library, watch videos, and building playlists. Four skins are included and you can retract the playlist to conserve space.

New Dell computers currently come with a browser "feature" that points you to a custom search page with a ton of paid results when you mistype a URL in the address bar. Danny Sullivan does a brilliant job of explaining how the Dell browser error pages work at Search Engine Land. Almost half the screen on my display set at 1280x1024 is filled with a paid listing, rather than the meaningful result I might expect.

My Dell Latitude D620 suffered from this problem when I got it. For instance, I typed 'google' in the address bar leaving off the .com. Here' s what the page looks like:

Now the easy way to avoid this is to install Firefox and kiss IE7 goodbye. I happen to like IE7 for some things, so instead of limiting my options, I figured out how to turn off Dell's lousy user experience.
With IE7 open, click Tools > Internet Options:

Click on the Programs tab:

Click the Manage add-ons button and locate the browswer add-on in the list called CBrowswerHelperObject Object from a publisher named (Not verified) Dell Inc. Click the radio button to Disable this plugin and click OK.

Close IE7 and relaunch it. Type in the same 'google' sans quotes in the address bar and you get the same results every other IE7 user expects to see when Google is their default search engine.

"Is there any Windows software similar to GarageBand?"

Questions about where to find a GarageBand equivalent for Windows pop in my inbox on a regular basis. My answer in the past has always been Sony Acid is great for loops, but it's hard to use; Propellerhead Reason is great for loops but it's hard to use; Project 5 is great for loops but it's hard to use; Kinetic is easy to use, but limited in functionality. I was cycling through software updates recently and started playing with Acoustica Mixcraft and realized I can finally answer this question with confidence.

"Is there a place to download a driver for my Sony camcorder for Vista? I upgraded to Windows Vista, and found that my Sony video camera no longer works. I need a new driver in order for my computer to recognize my video camera."

Some of the Sony camcorders support transferring video from tape over USB or iLINK. The USB connection requires a special driver for each version of Windows. The iLINK connection typically conforms with the standard FireWire transfer common to most digital video cameras. If you were previously using the USB connection to transfer video from your Sony camcorder to your computer, that feature probably no longer works with Vista because Sony doesn't have an updated driver for the USB support. Sony has a list of supported camcorders, with very few including Vista support for USB.

" I want to play games on my PC with an Xbox 360 controller, but I need a driver compatible with my Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit."

Both Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit are supposed to find the Xbox 360 controller drivers and install them automatically when you connect the controller for the first time. This doesn't always work flawlessly, so if this isn't an automatic process, the Microsoft Gaming site offers versions of the Xbox 360 controller drivers for all versions of Windows Vista as well as Windows XP.

How to make an HD-DVD using standard 4.7GB DVD media or 8.5GB dual layer disks.

After shooting numerous hours of high definition video footage, I've been itching for a way to create some HD-DVDs. There are no HD-DVD burners on the market at the moment. And media seems to be in scarce supply. Sure, I could shell out $700 for a Blu-ray burner, but then I'd need to spend another $600 for a player that conveniently connects to my television (like a PS3, for instance). At least I can use the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player with Windows Vista or my 360, and there's now an HP HD-DVD player in the wild as well. When I found out Pinnacle added support for HD-DVD burning to Pinnacle Studio Plus, I was thrilled. Better yet, they do it by burning to standard 4.7GB DVDs or to 8.5GB dual layer disks.

The HD-DVD burning feature is a $50 upgrade to the existing Pinnacle Studio Plus package and works well for authoring in either Windows XP or Windows Vista. The first time you go to the Make Movie menu and choose HD DVD from the Disc Type menu, Pinnacle opens a window asking you if you want to activate the feature. You can also add it to an existing copy of Pinnacle Studio Plus directly from Pinnacle's site.

How to Make an HD-DVD with Pinnacle Studio

Once you have the HD-DVD portion of Pinnacle Studio Plus activated, it's relatively easy to make an HD-DVD. Click the Make Movie button and choose the Disc tab. Select HD DVD from the Disk Type drop down and choose a Video Quality. Based on my testing, you want to stick with Best Quality, which gives you 23 minutes of movie time on a 4.7GB disk and 42 minutes on a 8.5GB disk. There is an option to maximize movie on the disk and anther one that dynamically adjusts based on how much footage you have, but if you want your video to look great on disk, stick with Best Quality and edit accordingly.

The Settings page is where you might need to make a few changes. It's here you can set a custom bit rate for your video content, convert the video to progressive scan content as the disk is authored and choose whether to burn to disk directly or create a file on your hard drive and then burn.

The only time you want to use progressive encoding is if your content is already progressive (like if your camera shoots in 720p rather than 1080i).

Based on the test DVDs I burned, I highly recommend choosing the Safe mode for Burn Options. I made several coasters and had to go back and re-render my project, which made the whole process of burning disks take several times longer.

Menus and HD-DVD Authoring in Pinnacle

In my tests of adding menus to HD-DVD projects, the final DVD would not play. In each test, the video launched to the menu screen and selecting a chapter caused the video to error out. This leads me to believe that the menuing in Pinnacle Studio Plus is a standard def only feature. This isn't a show stopper for me, but at some point it would be nice to have a working menu structure for HD-DVDs.

Some tips on HD-DVD Authoring with Pinnacle Studio:

• Pinnacle labels the disk the same name as your video project, so if you want a meaningful disk name, choose your project name accordingly.
• The software does not automatically adjust based on the type of disk you put in the drive. If you're using a dual layer disk, make sure you set the software to dual layer or you'll still only get 23 minutes of recording time when burning the project.
• Don't check the box to re-encode your content. The software will re-encode as necessary and it's almost never better to re-encode your files without reason.
• Know your format and playback options before authoring - in general, HDV cameras record interlaced content. You should master your disk with the interlacing intact under most circumstances.
• If you recorded your video at 59.94, you need to decimate the video to 29.97 with something like VirtualDub or Pinnacle won't recognize the video footage

While this isn't the perfect solution of having an HD-DVD burner and actual HD-DVD blank media, Pinnacle's $50 add-on for HD-DVD authoring is worth the investment. The disks play in the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player both connected to a PC and to an Xbox 360 console. They are also compatible with the Toshiba HD-DVD players. One especially nice feature is support for playback in Vista even without connecting to an HDCP compliant display, which makes for a more compelling story for those of us who don't have HDCP compliant monitors yet. You can acquire both Pinnacle Studio Plus and the HD-DVD add-on direct from Pinnacle.

NVIDIA finally has Windows Vista certified 64-bit drivers. This feels like a long time coming as ATI had there's out when Vista shipped. I'm running Windows Vista 64-bit on an AMD 64-bit machine and one of my major frustrations is finding the right drivers and software. Plenty of the 32-bit stuff will run in some kind of compatibility mode, but there's a large chunk of my software functionality that's just plain broken. Having the right video drivers is essential, especially when you want to do something seemingly simple like playing HD-DVDs. Thanks to Ed Bott for the tip-off.

One of the things I like most about the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive is portability. I can connect it to my Xbox 360 or I can plug it in to a PC elsewhere in the house. The only tricky part is figuring out all the right pieces to making HD-DVD playback work on your PC. Windows XP doesn't currently support HD-DVD playback without finding a hacked driver for the Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive, so if you want HD-DVD playback, moving to Windows Vista is your best option.

The software part of the equation is easy. Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra supports both HD-DVD and Blu-ray playback in the same download. It has the bonus of solving a number of problems related to using the new AVCHD camcorder format.

Several of the major hardware companies are offering tests to verify your system readiness. Just to see the results, I ran the ATI Vista Readiness Advisor on an HP system I got back in 2004, to see how it benchmarked as an upgrade candidate. According to the test, everything onboard passes the Good, Better and Best ratings with the exception of the video card. In reading the results, the Radeon 9800 Pro in this system should pass both the Good and Better ratings, at least according to the test specs. In fairness, I'm inclined to agree that the recommended upgrade to a 512MB Radeon X1600 would likely give it a little more life in the Vista universe. While I certainly wouldn't swear by this test, it's a solid reality check to see whether the upgrade cost of keeping a current system is higher than simply ordering a system shipping with Vista from one of the major PC vendors.

Here's the Good, Better, Best results from the system I tested:

Good

Better

Best

Windows Vista is finally shipping, which means it might be time to reassess the state of your existing computer. I know I've been holding off on getting anything new for at least a year longer than I wanted to, simply because I wanted to wait for hardware that would perform well with Microsoft's latest operating system.

My biggest decision at the moment is how I want to replace my current laptop. It's much slower than I'd like for doing things like video editing. I'm leaning heavily toward getting a MacBook Pro and running both Windows Vista and Windows XP via Parallels. That would get me many of the things I loved about having a Mac laptop back when OS X first came on the scene, without giving up all the things that are familiar to me about Windows.

The only thing holding me back on choosing the MacBook Pro is size. Part of me wants to get back to the small form factor of that Fujitsu Lifebook P1510D I toted around for several months. I loved the size. I loved having Tablet PC functionality combined with the size. But it was definitely not the machine for editing video on the go because the screen was just too small. Maybe Dell, Sony or HP will wow me with something in the near future - somehow I doubt it.

In the meantime, I'll still be posting regular tips for Windows XP for the foreseeable future. At the same time, I'll be looking to the future more often and posting additional tips and tutorials for those making the transition to Vista - especially in light of all the changes to Windows Movie Maker since version 2.1 arrived two plus years ago. I'm planning to do another book dedicated to the new version. Of course, if you're still using Windows XP, my first book on Windows Movie Maker, Easy Digital Home Movies, still applies.

Windows Vista Ultimate is the only version of Vista I'll be running on my home systems for a ton of reasons, but one of the added perks is the planned release of Ultimate Extras available only for the Ultimate version of Vista. The first two on deck are BitLocker, a drive encryption app similar to my long recommended solution TrueCrypt and the solitaire Hold 'Em game. More on BitLocker in another post. Hold 'Em pits you against 5 computer opponents in a simulated Texas Hold 'Em game. The game defaults to a starting bid of 10 and a max of 3 raises per hand, with each player staring with 1000 points in their pot. These are all configurable amounts, along with a customizable deck and background. You can name the other 5 players if you want to feel like you're playing against the poker stars. This isn't quite the same as playing against your friends in the Xbox 360 Live Arcade, but it's a more interesting way to kill time in a meeting than playing a traditional hand of solitaire.

With Windows Vista now available in stores, you might be thinking about upgrading your existing system or completely upgrading to a new system. In general, I'm leaning toward keeping all existing systems running Windows XP and only putting Vista on new machines, but that's primarily because I'm at least a year overdue for upgrades already. If you do decide to brave the upgrade path from XP to Vista, whatever you do, don't buy an upgrade version of Windows Vista. You'll be sorry later. In the past when you upgraded from one version of Windows to the next generation, you could do a clean install with the new OS and simply insert the old CD as proof you'd purchased the previous version. This time around, Microsoft makes things more difficult.

If you upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista, the upgrade CD requires XP to be installed before you install Vista. This means if you wipe your system, you'll have to install XP and then install Vista for a total of two complete operating system installs where one would have been sufficient.

With a few rare exceptions, it's generally a smart idea to update your system with security patches as soon as they are issued. I've been hesitant about turning on Automatic Updates to run fully unattended because the last time I left a computer in that mode I had something up on the screen, the machine rebooted itself after an update, and I lost what was on the screen. In the instance I'm describing, I think I lost a couple of Web pages I forgot to bookmark, but I hate having to retrace my steps. If it had been a file I forgot to save, the damage would have been worse. According to Jim Allchin, this problem is supposed to vanish in Windows Vista. If the system updates and needs to reboot, it's supposed to write the current state of everything open to a file, reboot the system and return things to normal as if nothing happened. Ed Bott wrote about this back in September when it was code named Freeze Dry, but I apparently missed it. Assuming the feature really works when Windows Vista ships, that's an update scenario I can live with. I'd love to get system updates without ever needing to reboot, but if that's not possible, at least not potentially losing my data when the computer reboots itself at 3am is good enough.

One interesting thing I learned recently about Vista is Sound Recorder finally supports unlimited record times. This means you can theoretically record as much audio as your hard drive will hold without ever downloading an additional app. For podcasting, this becomes interesting because the barrier to entry for the recording side of the equation is reduced to zero because there's only one button.

My laptop's Intel chipset either doesn't have the right drivers or is simply too weak to support the Vista glass, so you'll have to pardon the scrap metal skin on the screen shots, but you'll get the idea.

I had the great fortune of talking with Jim Allchin, Microsoft's Co-President of Platforms and Services Division, twice in one day. The first time was for the interview we did for The Chris Pirillo Show and the second time was over dinner at The Oceanaire Seafood Room in Seattle. Jim's the guy who takes most of the heat for Vista being delayed, deservedly or not. One thing is clear - he's extremely passionate about the Windows experience. In between being peppered with questions and comments from a handful of Windows community enthusiasts (Chris, Ryan Hoffman of Extended64, Brandon LeBlanc, and the Neowin guys), Jim dropped little tidbits about things we haven't heard talked about in the operating system. On several occasions no one at the table had realized the feature he mentioned was present in the current Windows Vista build. I'm sure we'll start to see these things appear in articles on the site's mentioned here over the coming days, but it's great to find that people are only scratching the surface.

With the December 4, 2007 update, Xbox 360 now directly supports streaming DivX AVI movies from your desktop. All you need is Windows Media Player 11 or the Zune software. I personally prefer Windows Media Player 11, because it also supports playing back Amazon Unbox videos on the Xbox 360.

Here's what you need to do to configure your computer to share video, music and photos with your Xbox 360. Make sure your Xbox 360 is turned on and connected to your home network before beginning.