Speed up Vista’s UI

Some of us thinks that Vista has one of the prettiest GUI in the industry, now powered by the muscle of your video card. Unfortunately, that same pretty GUI is also main reason why your Vista setup gets bogged down. This is especially true on machines that barely meet or exceed Vista’s recommended specs. These tweaks wont do much for a high end machine but lower end machines will see a dramatic performance improvement.

Here are some tips in order for you to speed up Vista:

• Disable Transparency. Right-click the desktop, click Personalize, and click Windows Color and Appearance. Uncheck Enable Transparency. Click OK.
• Get rid of the Sidebar. It’s cool, but some of those gadgets chow down on memory. Right-click the Sidebar, click Properties, and uncheck Start Sidebar When Windows Starts. Click OK. Then, right-click the Sidebar and click Close Sidebar. If you ever want it back, you can simply click the Start button and key in “sidebar” and hit Enter.
• Get rid of some of the visual effects. Open Control Panel, click Performance and System Tools, and click Adjust Visual Effects. In the resulting window, you can uncheck line items for animations, fades, and other effects; or simply click Adjust For Best Performance.
• Go with a non-Aero theme. To get rid of Aero entirely, use the Windows Classic, Windows Vista Basic, or Windows Standard theme. Right-click the desktop, click Personalize, and click Windows Color and Appearance. Click Open Classic Appearance Properties… and choose a theme in the Color Scheme list box. Click OK.

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