Vista Tips and Tweaks, Vista Tips, Vista Tutorials, Vista SP1

If you are using Vista and have an HP printer, especially of the All-In-One variety, you've probably noticed that once a week or so you get this obnoxious User Account Control popup dialog out of the blue asking for permission to run some Hewlett Packard update process called hprbupdate.exe.

Esther is back with a brand new demo focusing on another cool feature in Windows Vista - Snipping Tool.  Snipping Tool is really handy for anyone who needs to capture and/or send an image of their screen, a web page or document - really any time where the visual explains more than a description.

With the release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 a few weeks ago, users were introduced to new features, such as Web Slices and Accelerators, as well as enhanced Search capabilities that make browsing the Web much easier. Users can now be exposed to specific bits of information they want quick access to - from the latest news to the latest weather to search for a new blue 8GB Zune. I'd like to take a moment to highlight just a few examples of partners who have taken advantage of IE8's capabilities in Beta 2.

Archiving on hard drives? Now that disk drives are cheaper per gigabyte than tape cartridges, you might be tempted to archive data on disk drives and stick them on a shelf. The reason: the bits on the hard drive will gradually lose their magnetism, sometimes in as little as 12 months. Disks automatically rewrite marginal data blocks on the fly.

Why the free space of my system disk becomes smaller and smaller? Every time when we turn on the computer, we may find our system disk becomes larger and larger , doing nothing, even with some software uninstalled. Why?

We sat down with Microsoft to hear the company’s side of the Vista story.  What lessons have been learned following the worst? Windows launch in the company’s history? Is Microsoft doing enough to regain PC users’ faith?