Quote: “:::Crystal.Systema Suite:::

This visual style is Open Source. Feel free to modify, port, redistribute, and use it in your own projects in any way you want. No permission needed. Credit is required if you do so.”

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Quote: “Yup,.. another Aero mod [For Windows Vista ONLY]

Blue Start Orb with a white flag - Blue progress bars - Auto-hidden FolderBand
Softer shadows - Smaller grippers - Clear Taskbar, Start Menu & window borders
Enhanced white glow for better readability - Modified min/max/close buttons
Clear maximized TitleBar with black text & white glow - no blue selection borders

The zip file contains 3 Visual Styles, 3 Shellstyles & 2 Sidebar Styles:
Cleaero, Cleaero - DMT (Default Maximized Titlebar) & a Medium Taskbar version.
Shellstyles: with FolderBand, without FolderBand, Auto-hidden FolderBand.
Sidebar Styles: Cleaero & Cleaero Shaded”

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Quote: “After several weeks of researching and editing, I am extremely proud to present my work — Gelawin VS.

This VS is fully skinned in both Aero and Basic for x86 systems.

I drew heavy inspiration for this theme from the Ubuntu theme, “Gelatin”. (hence, Gelawin. Get it?) This isn’t an exact copy as you can see I added more ‘gloss’ to the orange areas.”

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Microsoft has published a list of programs that will not work or that will suffer from reduced functionality after the installation of Vista Service Pack 1.

The list of programs consists mostly of security applications, such as Trend Micro Internet Security 2008. However, programs such as The New York Times Reader application also feature on the list. Users are advised to install updates from the application vendor to fix the problem.

“Windows Vista Service Pack 1 contains many security, reliability, and feature updates for Windows Vista,” the company said. “A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1.”

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Over the past few days I posted two sets of benchmarks comparing Windows Vista RTM with Vista SP1 (first post here, second here). These posts generated a lot of feedback, and from reading this feedback it’s clear that what many people are really interested in is not the performance differences between Vista RTM and Vista SP1, but between Vista SP1 and XP SP2.

A few days ago I posted in reply to several TalkBack comments that I wouldn’t carry out these tests until XP SP3 is released. There didn’t seem any point. That didn’t satisfy the crowds who wanted to see Vista SP1 and XP SP2 go head to head. So, to cut a long story short, the pestering continued and I eventually gave in. So what follows are the fruits of nearly two whole days of work at the PC Doc HQ (the test was hampered by the death of a motherboard, something which rendered hours of work obsolete).

How does Windows Vista SP1 compare to Windows XP SP2? Read on …

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It seems like it was a busy month at Microsoft’s headquarter and now the IT administrator will have some work to do. Today the software company released 11 patches to fix 17 security vulnerabilities in all the Microsoft’s major applications from Windows (including Windows Vista) to Visual Basic and Internet Explores.

Microsoft rated six of the eleven updates as “critical” which means they fix a vulnerability that could be remotely exploited.

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This Visual style works well with the opaque black start button contrasting with crystal clear taskbar and windows. Simple but effective idea and well worth the download.

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The default Zune style by Microsoft has been edited to have an Nvidia theme. The results are quite pleasing

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Windows Vista Service Pack One is ready to ship, Microsoft says. PC manufacturers and consumers can expect the update in March. Microsoft has said that SP1 includes Vista OS improvements including reliability, security and performance. For a first look at those improvements read PC World’s review of beta SP1.

Unlike some of the reports and speculation from last week, Vista SP1 is not officially available today. Microsoft said that it will be available to new volume licensing customers beginning March 1. Existing Vista consumers will have to wait until mid-March, Microsoft says, when the download becomes available through Microsoft’s Windows Update Web site. Windows Vista users who have their systems configured to receive automatic updates will get SP1 automatically delivered in mid-April, Microsoft says…

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Windows Vista users now have a way to cut down the operating system’s famously large installation footprint with a free software tool.

Developer Dino Nuhagic released version 1.1 of vLite last week. The configuration utility is designed to remove Vista components such as Windows Media Player, Windows Mail, Windows Photo Viewer, Wallpapers and other utilities before installation, creating a new installable image.

The utility can also integrate other components such as hotfixes, drivers and language packs into the new image and has an unattended install function, Nuhagic said…

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