. If you hate the look of Aero, click Start/Control Panel/Themes and you can choose a non-Aero theme, such as Windows Classic. 2. Windows Vista's installer can detect serial-ATA (SATA) drives without the need to provide a driver diskette. Don't bother creating a diskette for your SATA drives before you install Vista. 3. If, for some reason, the Vista installation gets interrupted due to an unintentional shutdown or reboot, start the computer without booting the Vista DVD. Windows Vista's installer should pick up where it left off. If it does-n't, then restart the installation over from scratch. 4. When you perform a search with Vista's new, instant search feature, you can save the search in a special folder. This powerful feature allows you to create a virtual folder which, by default, is saved in your \\Searches\ folder. Every time you open such a folder, the search results are updated. 5. In Windows Vista, you can add additional clocks to the system tray. Click the clock, and then click Date and Time Settings. Click the Additional Clocks tab. You can add one or two additional clocks to the tray and select their time zones. 6. You can save your progress in most of the games included with Windows Vista—even the carry-overs from earlier versions of Windows. 7. You can create XML documents, which are more secure than regular text files or even word processor docs. Just create a document in a word processor, print it via the options menu, and select the XPS printer. 8. If you upgrade your graphics card in preparation for Windows Vista, be sure to get a new card with as much local memory as possible. Since Windows Vista renders everything—even the desktop and windows them-selves—as 3D surfaces, local 3D memory greatly improves performance...sometimes even more than a more powerful GPU. 9. Use the Ctrl + Alt + Del to open a window where you can access the common functions including the task manager, this will let you close programs even when the computer is sometimes frozen. 10. When you open new folder use the navigation items to be able to access more folders within the same window, moreover you can go back/forward to a folder/file you accessed earlier without closing the last window. hope this will give you an enhanced experience.
I have an eleventh addition. 11) Uninstall and go back to XP. I did today, it might be a bastard to get all the drivers, especially if it's a newly designed pc specifically for Vista, but it's hell worth it!
Twelfth Addition 12) If you have less than 2 GB of ram and want a quick and easy way of increasing your system memory using a flash drive then use ReadyBoost. You will need Readyboost compatible flash memory (you can find a list here: http://www.readyboostmemory.com/ ) and you should benefit from a performance increase.