Win Vista

Vista Manager 1.2.8

Vista Manager description
A powerful system utility which helps you to optimize and tweak, clean up your Windows Vista

Vista Manager is a powerful system utility which helps you to optimize and tweak, clean up your Windows Vista. It will increase you system speed, improve system security and suit your idea!

Windows Vista is the new Operating System for home users and professionals alike. Windows Vista brings clarity to your world, so you can more safely and easily accomplish everyday tasks and instantly find what you want on your PC.

Vista Manager is the powerful software tool to tweak and optimize your Windows Vista, it bundles more than 20 different utilities in one and help your system faster and more stable, secure and personal!

Here are some key features of "Vista Manager":

· Information
Get detailed system and all hardware information on your system; show all detailed information of running processes and threads on your machine; Vista Manager offers 1-clicking cleans your system automatically.

· Optimizer
Tweak your system to improve windows startup and shutdown speed; tweak your hardware to increase system speed and performance.

· Cleaner
Find out which files or folders engross your disk space and shown with chart; Find and clean junk files to increase Hard Disk space; Duplicate Files Finder can scan your computer for files with the same size, name and modification time; Registry Cleaner can easily checks your registry and repair incorrectly linked registry entries, automatically remove invalid entries; Registry Defrag rebuilds and re-indexs your registry to reduce application response time and registry access time.

· Security
You can improve desktop, menus, Windows logon securities, and enable numerous hidden performance options of system, disable system updates and error reports; hide and restrict to access drives, specify which applications are not allowed to be executed on your computer; encrypt/decrypt and shred files, change the location of system folders; Privacy Protector can maintain your personal privacy by eliminating the tracks that you leave behind; create lots of randomization password once.

· Network
Optimize your Internet connection speed, manage all shares items; tweak your Internet Explorer easily.

· Misc. Utilities
Show the collection of Windows utilities; help you find out the installation key of Windows, Office products; shutdown your PC or remind you automatically.

Requirements:

· 10 MB free disk space

Limitations:

· 15 days trial

Vista Look will give a Vista look to the older programs you still use daily.

Vista Look is a small and reliable application representing a graphical user interface to create Microsoft's manifest files.

Once the "Give Vista Look" command is given, if your program name is "program.exe", a "program.exe.manifest" file is created and it sits belong your program. Just run your program to view the newly rounded and shaded controls.

Programs that are built by older versions of tools as Visual Studio or C Builder, have no information for Windows to use new components included in the last XP or Vista editions.

But, you can give this information to Windows by providing a companion manifest file. This is just what Vista Look does.

Requirements:

· The Vista Look program and programs modified by it, require commctl32 version 6.0, that is assumed to be provided with all version of Windows XP and Vista.

DOWNLOAD LOCATIONS FOR VISTA LOOK

External Mirror 1

Vista Transformation Pack description
Bring to your desktop the look of Microsoft's future operating system, Windows Vista

I’m pretty sure you must know and have seen Windows Vista before. It looks really nice for major GUI updates. Many people who have seen it wish to get Vista-style looks for their operating system. It might sounds stupid to say this since you all know what it is but just bear it

Vista Transformation Pack will transform your Windows user interface to ultimate Windows Vista alike looks that everyone will never notice it’s the same old Windows XP (or 2003).

Screenshots

Setup’s user interface with saving setup information for later use feature

Vista Transformation Pack - Express Mode (Simplify the transformation in single page)

Boot Screen

Logon Screen

Desktop Screenshot (Yeah…not WindowBlinds)

Vista Transformation Pack - Welcome Center (Refined Maintenance Center)

Vista Transformation Pack - Configure User Account (Personalise Vista experiences’ per-user configuration)

Desktop Screenshot (Enhanced by Vista Transformation Pack 7)

· Boot screen
· Welcome Screen / Logon Screen
· New msstyles files (visual styles)
· New desktop and file icons
· New toolbar icons
· Progress Dialogs
· Sounds scheme
· System Tray icons
· New Wallpapers
· Windows Media Player Skins

	Softpedia Secure Download (US)
	Softpedia Secure Download (RO)

del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily post sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your bookmarks. RSS feeds, tags and bookmarklets make bookmarking your links a treat !! You can also view the currently most popular bookmarks. Get started quickly by this Beginner’s Guide. There are several quick ways of posting. Decoding del.icio.us makes interesting reading incase you are curious about this peculiar domain name del.icio.us.

Official del.icio.us tools

• Tagometer Badge - easily display both tags and number of saves on your site
• Del.icio.us API - create your own del.icio.us tools. More info about using the API
• Del.icio.us Blog - posts official updates about the service.
• Network Badges - allow you to display details about your del.icio.us network as part of your website.
• Randomizer button - provides another way to discover new bookmarks at del.icio.us.
• Del.icio.us Firefox Extension - Integrates del.icio.us into Firefox.
• Play Tagger - easily play mp3 files directly on your website or blog by simply including a tiny javascript.
• Internet Explorer Active Channel - An easy way to keep your bookmarks in sync with Internet Explorer.
• Buttons for Internet Explorer - Integrate del.icio.us right into Internet Explorer.
• “Save This Page” buttons - provide your site visitors an easy way to save it to del.icio.us.
• Firefox Search Plugin - Integrate del.icio.us search directly into Firefox.
• Tagrolls - display your del.icio.us tags as part of your website.
• Linkrolls - display your latest del.icio.us bookmarks on your website.
• Del.icio.us Toobar - for firefox users.
• Json Feeds - load a javascript object that contains your latest bookmarks, by including this script.
• Del.icio.us Url - Enter a url to see its history on del.icio.us.

Third party del.icio.us tools

• delicious post checker - Tool for verifying and deleting bookmarks in del.icio.us
• Fastest Ways to Post - Powerful bookmarklets based on the del.icio.us API
• Fresh Del.icio.us - A client-side application to keep clean (check broken urls) of your del.icio.us account bookmarks.
• Feedburner Feedflare - reflects the number of saves and the top three tags for each item in your post in a feedburner feed.
• del.icio.us cached++ - uses the MagpieRSS (built-in with WP) to fetch and cache bookmarks
• Scripted Re-Mark- Edits all your bookmarks in one hit (”batch mode”). It makes it easy to re-tag bookmarks en masse, make wholesale changes to URLs or update descriptions in bulk.
• cloud.lic.io.us - A Mac OS X dashboard widget that displays a cloud of your delicious tags.
• Delicious Mona - Add any article to ‘My Del.icio.us’ bookmarks with a single mobile click.
• Delicer - del.icio.us client tool to manage your tags and posts effectively and quickly navigate through your bookmarks.
• Ridiculous - a simple wrapper for del.icio.us API writing in Ruby.
• DeliciousTray - application sits in the Windows system tray and gives quick access to all links and tags posted to your Del.icio.us.
• Mischievous - Browser plugin for Internet Explorer that uses del.icio.us to manage your queue of drag and drop links.
• Epilicious - is an extension for the Gnome web browser Epiphany that lets you synchronise your local bookmarks with the bookmarks in a Delicious account.
• Find Similar Sites - a mashup of del.icio.us and easyutil.com to find relevant web sites based on people’s tags/bookmarks on del.icio.us.
• Mobilicio.us - Access your del.icio.us bookmarks from your mobile device
• SlashLinks - automatically mirrors del.icio.us links and their design and layout can now be fully customized.
• Pukka - minimalist posting client to easily post to one or more del.icio.us accounts.
• Another Delicious Sidebar - A firefox extension sidebar for accessing del.icio.us bookmarks, also edit and delete links.
• Autoblogger - reads recent del.icio.us bookmarks marked with a specified tag and creates a link to them with the page title, as well as quote a random (filtered, given simple heuristics) excerpt of the text.
• DiggLicious - a cool blend of digg.com and del.icio.us.
• Wordpress Delicious Plugins - Collection of Wordpress plugins that add del.icio.us functionality.
• DoubleUp - Let your visitors browse your del.icio.us bookmarks in a neat way.
• Thumblicio.us - displays screenshots of sites by tags or most popular sites from del.icio.us.
• New Search Tools for Del.icio.us - offers multiple ways to search tags and bookmarks of yours and other users.
• post.icio.us - new tools for quicker posts in del.icio.us. Offers several quick ways to add, delete posts and rename tags. Also useful is the experimental pop up bookmarklet.
• Expialidocio.us - uses the OpenLaszlo platform and the del.icio.us API to display posting histograms and time-specific tag clouds.
• mog.rif.icio.us - is WordPress plugin that displays del.icio.us bookmarks for one user in the sidebar. Organizes by tag, in a dynamic menu and checks once a day for new bookmarks.
• deli.ckoma - provides statistical data gained from del.icio.us like posts per day, number of tags per post etc.
• Del.icio.us Opera Buttons - Opera allows the users to create custom buttons. Enter your del.icio.us username and then you can click on the buttons or drag them into your main bar.
• Delimages - a view of images from del.icio.us.
• From Del.icio.us to WordPress - How to automatically post daily links.
• Safarilicious - exports safari bookmarks to del.icio.us automatically.
• Delancey - presents an alternate view of del.icio.us bookmarks by keeping track of which ones are used most frequently.
• Bookmark this! WordPress Plugin - adds a “Bookmark this page on del.icio.us” link to your posts or sidebar.
• Diggdot.us - Combines posted links of Digg, slashdot, and del.icio.us/popular.
• Geotagg del.icio.us bookmarks - tag and view bookmarks in Google Earth and do a virtual tour.
• Greasemonkey Del.icio.us Director - every time you visit your own del.icio.us page, the Director should auto-load.
• Private del.icio.us bookmarklet - URLs saved with this bookmarklet will not appear publicly that you have bookmarked them. Based on Semi-private bookmarking in del.icio.us
• ar.icio.us - is a PHP script that allow different sorting methods for your del.icio.us RSS feeds.
• browse.delicious - is visual browser that let users explore and browse through a sample data-set of del.icio.us
• del.icio.us surf - lets you ‘channelsurf’ del.icio.us tags/users. A random page from the popular page for that tag is loaded into the frame and a link to post the page to del.icio.us is given.
• del.icio.us pioneers - Who keeps posting the most popular links?
• Use del.icio.us for categories in blogger - 3 ways from lo-tech & least integrated to hi-tech & most integrated
• del.icio.us one click delete - firefox extension that allows deletion of del.icio.us bookmarks with one click.
• VeryDelicious - is a toolbar that allows the user to quickly add and find del.icio.us bookmarks.
• del.icio.us post - firefox extension that posts current page or link to del.icio.us
• LiveMarks - real time live preview of latest and popular del.icio.us bookmarks
• delic123 - is a Firefox toolbar extension that facilitates posting and personal/global searching for del.icio.us
• Familiar Taste - is a Greasemonkey extension for the Firefox web browser that consults your set of del.icio.us bookmarks to see if you have the current page marked.
• Delicious Soup - A tool that reveals your del.icio.us activities.
• Revealicious - is a set of graphic visualisations for your del.icio.us account that allow you to browse, search and select tags, as well as viewing posts matching them.
• Lazy Sheep Bookmarklet - auto-tags and auto-describes your bookmarks.
• DeliciousSubmit - Batch submit URLs to del.icio.us
• Tortuga Delicious ActiveX Component - it automates the submission of URLs to del.icio.us
• Delicioso - a free “power” submit program for del.icio.us.
• Vox Delicii - view a “heat mapped” visualization of the current week’s popular content on Del.icio.us.
• Del.icio.us filtered - Seeing a link once should be enough.
• Startplane - a directory based on the popular del.icio.us bookmarking.
• del.icio.us direc.tor - is a prototype for an alternative web-based rich UI for del.icio.us. Delivers a responsive interface for managing user accounts with a large number of records.
• Gataga - search for bookmarks in popular social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us, Furl etc.
• konqil.icio.us - Konqueror service menu for del.icio.us
• One-Click Delete - extensions adds a ‘delete’ link to del.icio.us pages. Similar bookmarklets at post.icio.us
• Cloudalicious - graph any del.icio.us URL Tag Cloud’s progression over time.
• Grafolicious - A webmaster tool to see the evolution of a del.icio.us bookmark graphically.
• Backing up Del.icio.us to Gmail - Simple tutorial based on a script from Bill Mill.
• del.icio.us backup - This ruby script dumps all your del.icio.us bookmarks into a sqlite database.
• Styling del.icio.us - user skin for Firefox (Greasemonkey) and Safari.
• Delicious.NET - This version includes a core dll that is a wrapper around del.icio.us RSS feeds, and most of the del.icio.us user api.
• Outfoxed - add del.icio.us users (or any other RSS 1.0 sources) to your list of informers.
• Bookmark this - code to add a “Bookmark This” link on every post, next to the Comments link.
• Technorati and del.icio.us Tags for Blogger - GreaseMonkey script to make it easier to add Technorati Tags to your blog post when editing with Blogger.
• Rubilicious - Delicious bindings for Ruby.
• descriptious - Adds descriptions to del.icio.us/popular and Populicious feeds
• tagSense.net - is a Windows client for del.icio.us. Import all your bookmarks from del.icio.us, search as you type, hotkey launches.
• del.icio.us Apple Script - lets you post to del.icio.us from NetNewsWire - from the browser pane, not the subscriptions.
• dashLicious - Dashboard widget for posting to Del.icio.us. Also optimised for Safari and NetNewsWire users.
• delimport - Index your del.icio.us bookmarks using Spotlight.
• Audiolicious - is a Windows program that lets you turn any RSS feed into a podcast. It uses text-to-speech to convert the feed’s webpages into MP3 files.
• Post to del.icio.us from FeedDemon - add del.icio.us as a “BlogThis” tool to post directly from FeedDemon.
• Copy Del.icio.us Bookmarks to Furl - Import your del.icio.us bookmarks to Furl.
• Scrumptious - firefox extension that lets you create and modify del.icio.us bookmarks from a sidebar, using the tags that other people have chosen for the current webpage (as well as adding you own).
• del.icio.us Categorizer - reconstructs a hierarchic ordering for your del.icio.us links using set theory.
• Furl to Delicious - Import your Furl bookmarks to Delicious.
• Del.icio.us Auto-Complete - a Greasemonkey extension that adds tag auto-complete capabilities to the traditional del.icio.us posting areas increasing your posting speed.
• Trendalicious - is a near real-time view of website popularity trends as reflected by the del.icio.us social bookmarking service.
• Delicious Linkbacks - Add the bookmarklet to your browser, then you can get a look at what del.icio.us users are saying about (or at least how they are tagging) nearly any web page with one click.
• del.icio.us Most popular Treemap - a treemap of the most popular. [size = popularity, brightness = average age]
• MySQLicious - is a tool for mirroring del.icio.us bookmarks into a MySQL database.
• del.icio.us loader - loads your Firefox bookmarks directly into your del.icio.us account.
• introsp.icio.us - The Ruby script analyzes your del.icio.us links to generate a list of your favourite interests.
• Delibar - it will be store all your bookmarks in the system bar so you can easily access at it by select the tag and the link.
• WordPre.cio.us - imports del.icio.us bookmarks into your WordPress blog.
• Search plugin for Mozilla browsers - is a search plugin for del.icio.us that allows you to search your bookmarks.
• HuntAndGather - is a firefox extension meant to provide for some nice functionality. It opens tabs corresponding to the latest URLs stored on del.icio.us given the desired tag with several search functions.
• del.icio.us import script - a perl script which will import Netscape bookmarks file into del.icio.us
• delicious-java - is a Java API for interacting with the del.icio.us social bookmarks service.
• The Easiest Way to Publish del.icio.us Links on Your Site - how you can publish your links on your site.
• delicious-discuss - is an all-purpose mailing list for chatting with other users.
• Automatic filing with del.icio.us - file the current web page in the read_later category in one click.
• sid.vicio.us - creates ontologies for tags on del.icio.us
• Backing up del.icio.us - A tool for backing up your bookmarks. It helps to preserve your bookmarks if the server crashes some day.
• del.icio.us tag search - look up del.icio.us links that are tagged with one or more subjects.
• foxylicious - a Mozilla Firefox extension that syncs your del.icio.us bookmarks into your browser bookmarks.
• extispicious - generates randomly juxtaposed tags, allowing you to draw your own meanings and revelations from the overlapping entrails.
• taga.licio.us - is tag filter for del.icio.us. It produces a page with links from selected tags, allows to integrate del.icio.us links for one or more tags into an existing page, limited to a specified “freshness”, and comes with hundreds of options.
• avar.icio.us - is yet another del.icio.us posting interface with a dash of Javascript. It looks like the normal posting form, but has a couple of special feature like auto-completion in the tag box and suggestions of related tags you’ve used before.
• nutr.itio.us - is a bookmarklet that allows selection of the text for the description of the link to add to your delicious links
• delicious firefox plugin - integrates del.icio.us with Firefox.
• del.icio.us + Gmail - A script which runs once a day, crawls each link and sends an email to a gmail account with the ‘From’ field being the page url, the ‘Subject’ being the tags, and the body being a copy of the page.
• del.icio.us Tag Stemmer - Uses Porter stemming to show where you’ve made different del.icio.us tags with the same English word stem. You can use it to help clean up your personal fauxonomy.
• delicious2safari - imports your del.icio.us bookmarks into Safari.
• cocoalicious - A cocoa del.icio.us client for Mac OS X.
• Sorting del.icio.us/popular - a bookmarklet that will sort del.icio.us/popular not just by total number of posts, but by the ratio of recent to total posts.
• Pasta - is a plain text pasting service for del.icio.us
• Mapping del.icio.us with Anthracite and OmniGraffle - a tutorial for creating visual exploration of del.icio.us tags, but not inclined to write custom Perl code to do so.
• Extended del.icio.us bookmarklets - to extend del.icio.us functionality.
• Skinning del.icio.us - tips to apply skins to del.icio.us interface.
• Delicious Link Checker is a perl script which will retrieve all of the users links and check them, reporting if they are still accessible, or the error code (and slightly more helpful message) if not.
• foaflicious - is an application for generating a FOAF file from your del.icio.us inbox.
• del.icio.us Illogical Interface - [del.icio.us] bookmark filtering with logical operators on tags
• Backup Del.icio.us with Excel - helps to backup your bookmarks in Excel 2003.
• Delicious Mind Map Maker - this program will make a Clustered Mind Map out of your delicious entries and add the map to the list.
• Oishii - is kind of a del.icio.us mini-zeitgeist. It polls the del.icio.us front page every 5 minutes, and returns all sites bookmarked by at least 30 people.
• BookmarksToDelicious - is a standalone Python client for posting bookmarks from a file to the delicious
• Bunnyhug Updater del.icio.us - an application that lets you download all of your del.icio.us bookmarks and save them on your local machine.
• del.icio.us Smart Tagging Plugin for WordPress - to add this capability to your WordPress blog.
• spid.ero.us - helps to find fresh bookmarks from various social bookmark managers like del.icio.us, spurl, and furl.
• Related del.icio.us Links in Your Sidebar - using RSS, PHP and Magpie.
• Integrating Bloglines and del.icio.us - to easily post things you read in Bloglines to delicious
• Gnomolicious is an GNOME applet that help you post links on the del.icio.us site simply by drag and dropping them.
• Services Delicious is a client for the REST-based web service of del.icio.us. It allows you to select, add and delete your bookmarks from any PHP script. You do not need to worry about the XML that is sent or how to build the REST urls.
• Graph del.icio.us subscriptions network - browse the network of del.icio.us users as defined by their inbox subscription lists.
• Graph del.icio.us related tags - graphically browse related del.icio.us tags.

Submit your del.icio.us tool - This post is constantly updated. Post a comment to get your tool listed here. A backlink will be appreciated.

Manage your life and time better with Windows Calendar.

Windows Calendar is a flexible, easy-to-use tool for planning and managing all of your activities and coordinating your schedule with other people's. As the pace of life accelerates at work and at home, many people find it helpful to use a PC-based calendar to manage their time and coordinate their schedule with family, friends, and colleagues. Windows Calendar also includes a feature you can use to create a personal task list and to receive automatic notifications and reminders about specific tasks or upcoming appointments.

Learn more about how to publish your calendar.

Find more Internet calendars for Windows Vista.

Personal time management

Creating appointments

With Windows Calendar you can easily create appointments. After an appointment is on your calendar, you can set up an alert to remind you when the appointment is approaching. You can set Windows Calendar to alert you minutes, hours, or even days ahead of time, depending on how much advance notice you want.

You can also set up recurring appointments. Perhaps you attend a weekly book club meeting, have a standing haircut appointment every six weeks, or pay your mortgage on the same day each month. With Windows Calendar, you can create one appointment and then instruct the calendar to set up a series of similar appointments at the intervals you choose.

Managing tasks

Windows Calendar includes a personal task list, which makes it easy to organize and manage the things you need to do. For each task on your list, you can describe what you need to do, set a deadline for completion, choose a priority ranking so you tackle the most important tasks first, and keep track of your progress. You can also set reminders to let you know when a task is nearly due. And as you complete each task, you can simply check it off your list and have the satisfaction of watching it disappear.

Shared calendars

Windows Calendar enables you to set up individual calendars for multiple people. This is especially helpful for families or other groups who share a single PC. Windows Calendar makes it easy for people who use the same computer to coordinate their personal schedules by letting them compare information from any or all personal calendars, side-by-side in a single view.

Imagine a busy family with two parents and three children ages 10, 12, and 15. Because everyone in the family has access to a shared PC running Windows Vista, each person can use Windows Calendar to set up and manage his or her own personal schedule. Windows Calendar enables each family member to view the others' calendars, either selectively or all at once.

As the parents plan for the week ahead, they can overlay their children's calendars and spouse's calendar onto their own to see what everyone in the family has planned and to make sure no one overlooks any important activities. After reviewing all of the schedules together, they might notice that they need to schedule time to attend one child's soccer game, another's school play, and a parent-teacher conference for the third child. Or they might choose to compare their schedule only with their spouse's calendar to make sure at least one parent will be home by a certain time each evening. Appointments from each calendar are displayed in a different color, making it easy to tell whose schedule each item belongs to.

Calendar subscriptions and publishing

Windows Calendar is fully compatible with the popular iCalendar format, so you can import and export calendar information to and from other applications and websites.

Using Windows Calendar, you can subscribe to calendars hosted on websites in the iCalendar format and then view those calendars alongside your own. For example, you can subscribe to the season schedule of your favorite professional baseball team, the activities calendar for your child's middle school, or the annual schedule of a civic organization whose meetings you attend-and automatically stay up to date with any changes in those events.

The iCalendar compatibility of Windows Calendar also makes it easy to publish your own calendar on the Internet through a web host. If, for example, you chair a committee, organize a carpool, or coach your child's basketball team, you can use one of the calendar views in Windows Calendar to create a schedule and then publish it to the Web so others can see and share that information. If you want, you can publish your personal schedule with password protection, so only designated friends and family members can access and view your calendar.

Learn more about how to publish your calendar.

Find more Internet calendars for Windows Vista.

E-mail invitations

With Windows Calendar, you can use e-mail to send and receive appointments and invitations. This makes it even easier to keep your family or other groups in sync.

Some product features are only available in certain editions of Windows Vista and may require advanced or additional hardware.

Microsoft has announced the release of the first Technical Beta of "Office 12" on November 16. The version will be available to a limited number of customers and partners.

The Redmond company has made considerable investment over the user changing significatamente. Office 12 will include applications comeMicrosoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, InfoPath, OneNote, Publisher, Project, and Visio.

Jeff Raikes, president of the Business Division, said that Office 12 will offer many examples of "transparent integration between applications and functions. Worthy of note are the new features for easy creation and data sharing between their employees through other servers (Jeff Raikes from an interview on IDG News Service).

I discover more interested in the evolution of the suite can visit the site Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows dove ad attenderli vi è una nutrita serie di screenshot. Waiting to where there is a large number of screenshots.

How much of a departure? Here are some of the new elements in the suite upgrade, due next year and codenamed Office 12 (actual product name TBD--wonder if it'll be "Office Vista?").

The "Ribbon." With one fell swoop, this all-encompassing UI conceit mostly replaces drop-down menus, toolbars, dialog boxes, and task panes as we know them. The Ribbon is an oversized area at the top of the screen that holds formatting tools for an array of Office options. It's broken down into multiple panels, and the tools change both at your command and in context as you work with different elements in a document.

In general, Microsoft says, it's trying to revamp the Office interface so it's less about commands and more about results. So in the Ribbon and elsewhere, you often get What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get thumbnails of the results you'll get if you choose an option. (For instance, Excel has various cell formatting effects which you can view right in the Ribbon.)

The Ribbon looks awfully large, and the logical reaction is to grow suspicious that it's stealing screen space that would otherwise go to displaying your document. It is big, but Microsoft describes its effect as a "Flat Tax" on screen real estate. Which means that the Ribbon stays the same size at all times, incorporating functions which would in the past have been accomplished through multiple toolbars and other elements which would have hogged additional space.

Real-time previews. When you select an item for formatting and run through options in the Ribbon (say, various fonts), your document will change to show how it would be affected by that formatting. (If this notion sounds familiar, you're probably a WordPerfect user--Corel's suite has had this for years.)

"Floaties." I'm guessing these will get a more serious-sounding name, but they're already useful-looking: In some places in Office, you'll get a pop-up menu of formatting options that appear right next to the document element that can be formatted. These look like a hybrid of today's right-click menus and Office's SmartTags...the former of which will also survive in the Office 12 interface, and the latter of which may also remain.

The whole goal of these changes, the company says, is to get more of the power of the applications into users' hands, putting features at your fingertips which are currently buried in menus. The new interface elements supercede the current interface in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. In Outlook, they appear in the window in which you compose e-mail, but not elsewhere. (Microsoft says the new interface is tweaked for document creation, and isn't necessarily optimal for other types of work.)

Other apps that are nominally part of the Office family, such as Publisher and Visio, won't use the new interface at first, according to Microsoft, but may pick it up eventually.

One of the first questions out of my mouth at our demo was, "Is there a 'Go Back to the Old Office look and feel' mode?" The answer is...no, absolutely not. Microsoft's so confident in this new approach that it'll be the only interface option in Office 12.

Microsoft hasn't released a beta version of Office 12 yet, so all I can show you are some sample images that the company is distributing. Here's a closeup of part of the Word interface (click on it, and the other screen images below, to see the whole screen in question):

A couple of things of note about the above screen:

Those items such as "References" and "Mailings" don't lead to drop-down menus. Click on one, and the Ribbon changes, revealing a different set of tools. (There's still a File drop-down menu, but it leads to a more visual, interactive menu than we're used to.)

Unlike the current Office, a lot of the tools in Office 12 involve showing canned formatting effects and letting you apply them with a click. Such as the type effects in the above screen's "Quick Formatting" section. (Tools for manually formatting documents are still there in the new suite, but it looks like they'll be played down.)

Here's a bit of a PowerPoint screen showing the Ribbon in that application, complete with drawing and formatting tools:

And here's a taste of the new Access interface:

What to make of all this? I suspect that a lot of the initial reaction to this change will be really negative. Microsoft, after all, has a history of tweaking the Office interface in ways which end up being either reviled or ignored by most of the world at large. (I was present at the reviewer's workshop in 1996 or thereabouts at which the company unveiled "Clippy"--the shortly-to-be-infamous talking paperclip--and explained how its research showed he'd be loved by newbies and IT pros alike.)

It is natural to approach this makeover with a healthy dash of skepticism. But my initial reaction based on an hour of demo is this: "Microsoft is doing something really ambitious, in reaction to real problems with today's bloatware--it'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off." That's lot more hopeful than my initial reaction upon learning about Clippy all those years ago, which was "Is this some sort of perverse practical joke?"

Until we can try the software for ourselves--and let you know what we think--we've got more questions than answers. Such as these...

Will people be willing to give the new look a shot? If you commit to Office 12, you're going to commit to this new interface and the learning curve it requires...no looking back. It'll be fascinating to learn how many people are willing to make the leap, and how quickly they do it.

Will the new interface break anything? Microsoft says that most macros, Visual Basic customizations, and other third-party tweaks to the Office apps should still work in Office 12. I'm guessing that there will be at least some high-profile problems. (It's unclear to me, for instance, how an add-in that adds items to menus will work if Office doesn't have menus as we know them.)

Is inconsistency going to be a problem? The new Office isn't even going to appear throughout the core Office apps, let alone in other Microsoft office programs or third-party mainstays such as Photoshop and Quicken. Even once you're comfortable with the new Office, leaping back and forth between old-school apps and new-school ones will take some getting used to.

Will it be a trendsetter? I'm guessing that this new look will either start to influence other applications very quickly--or it'll turn out to be a dead end. I don't see a scenario in which the Microsoft apps behave completely different from every other program on the market.

Will it feel dumbed down? Interfaces that try to make things simpler for the masses have a way of getting in the way of savvy, experienced users. And many folks tend to look at highly visual, colorful interfaces as being childish. (As the Microsoft program manager who demoed the software mentioned herself, DOS fanatics sneered at Windows itself for years.)

Based on Microsoft's demo, I think there's a chance, at least, that it's found a way to streamline the applications' designs without unduly irritating old pros--at least old pros with an open mind--but we won't know for sure until we've had the opportunity to bang away at beta versions of the apps for awhile. Which we will as soon as we can. Stay tuned...

Will it get richer over time? With maybe a year to go until Office 12 shows up, Microsoft still has time to polish up its interface. But it looks like this pass at the new UI will be less customizable than the Office interface we know today. (The Ribbon will have a "Quick Launch" section that lets you store favorite features, but you apparently won't have much ability to rearrange the Ribbon's elements.) Assuming this new interface sticks around in Office 13 and beyond, it'll be intriguing to see how it develops.

What happens to the competition? I've written recently of how Microsoft Office-like OpenOffice.org, the free office suite, is looking these days. When Office 12 ships, OpenOffice.org will suddenly sport the "old" interface. The same holds true for WordPerfect, which has lately been following a "We're a lot like Microsoft Office, only more affordable" strategy. That's not necessarily a knock on those products--actually, it might turn out to be a major point in their favor, since they'll presumably still sport the look and feel which the world is familiar with, while Office 12 will be an unknown quantity. But at the very least, the question "From a typical user's standpoint, how are Microsoft Office and cheaper alternatives different?" will have a number of strikingly clear new answers.

In most ways that matter, Office 97 was the last Microsoft upgrade that presented a significantly different experience for end users. That'll change when Office 12 ships; it's too early to tell whether it'll change for better or worse, but at least it's going to change.

So what sort of features would you find irresistable in a Microsoft Office upgrade?

Download Interrupt-Affinity Policy Tool Interrupt_Affinity_ Policy_Tool.msi 272 KB Updated: Oct 1, 2006

About IntPolicy

IntPolicy improves performance and scaling of large computers that contain multiple processors with partitioning and setting the affinity for tasks to particular processors. When properly configured, the technique of partitioning permits caches on the processors to be used more effectively, thereby improving performance and scalability.

IntPolicy uses the affinity policy characteristic of a device to permit affinity of device interrupts to particular processors. By clicking the Advanced button, you can set the device policy to one of the following:

The following table shows the definition for each setting.

For more information about device affinity policies, refer to Interrupt Affinity and Priority.

IntPolicy permits you to direct device interrupts to a specific set of processors. On a Windows Server 2008-based multiprocessor computer, the interrupt controller directs a set of processors to service a device interrupt, where one of the processors services the interrupt based on machine-specific heuristics. By using IntPolicy, you can choose to override the default behavior when you configure the affinity policy of a device to specify a set of processors as the target for the device interrupt. We recommend that you choose a single processor to be the target.

Interrupt binding can affect the overall performance of a computer. However, no single algorithm produces the best performance under all possible workloads.

This is why on most platforms running with eight logical processors or less, Windows Server 2008 by default directs interrupts to any available processor. You might want to partition interrupts for certain devices to particular processors or experiment with various configurations to find the optimal configuration. Note that this tool permits any configuration, even non-optimal ones.

Because IntPolicy uses the affinity policy registry keys for a device, IntPolicy cannot be used on Windows versions earlier than Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), and then only on devices that have interrupt resources and are not shared with other devices. Also, some devices request specific affinity for their interrupts and such settings override any device affinity policy settings that IntPolicy sets.

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How to Install IntPolicy

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How to Use IntPolicy

Note: The Don't Restart Device When Making Changes check box is intended for advanced users and can be used to change a device affinity policy setting without restarting the selected device. When this option is enabled, any change made does not take effect until the next time the device is restarted.

Even though all the computer devices appear in the Devices list, we recommend that you use IntPolicy only on devices that have interrupt resources. To see which devices have interrupt resources, use Device Manager and then view resources by type.

Interrupt-affinity settings made with IntPolicy persist between reboots; that is, after an interrupt-affinity mask is defined for a device, it remains associated with the device until the administrator changes it. If a device is associated with a processor being removed from the computer, you must update the affinity mask for the device before the processor is removed. Also, generally you should not use IntPolicy on any device sharing interrupts with another device or for devices that have preset interrupt affinity.

Processor enumeration on computers that use hyperthreading first assign processor numbers to the primary logical processor for each processor and then assign numbers to the secondary. For example, for dual physical processor computers with hyperthreading, the first processor has logical processor 0 and 2 and the second processor has logical processor 1 and 3. The third-party products that are discussed in this article are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.

Windows Vista represents the latest operating system released by the software giant Microsoft that was meant to revolutionize the work on our systems and other computer activities.

This version of Windows is regarded as the most secure edition of the operating system, containing several tools to protect the computer: firewall, application control and Windows Defender antispyware tool. Although Windows Vista should be safe, there are a lot of threats already available that are able to harm our systems and are created especially for Windows Vista operating system.

It's obvious that Vista users must install an antivirus solution but the market is enormous, offering an impressive number of utilities. Kaspersky Antivirus is one of the most known applications that are able to discover and remove infections, being installed on millions of computers from all around the world. Because Windows Vista is continuously spreading, Kaspersky Lab developed a special edition of the antivirus solution compatible with this version of the operating system.

Virus Bulletin, one of the most important security authorities in the entire world, conducted multiple tests on several products, Kaspersky being the only tool that blocked 100 percent of the infections.

"Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 passed the test with flying colors: it detected and removed 100% of all the malicious pr