Many people don't bother to configure their systems even though this might save them precious time in the future. Making a few changes can increase your productivity dramatically. In this article we will try to show you how to configure the Taskbar and the Start Menu so that you will have all the important shortcuts in one place. This will definitely save you precious time which is normally wasted by making endless clicks trying to find an application you need to work with.

Recycle Bin is one of the things that were redesigned in Windows Vista. It no longer has separate tabs for each partition. There is only one tab and you need to scroll up or down through your partitions list in order to make the changes you want. Also, you can no longer make “global settings” that apply to all your partitions.

This is why we decided to create this short tutorial and show our users how to configure the “new” Recycle Bin.

Like most computer professionals, I always try to find tweaks that improve the speed of my system or, at least, some usability aspects. In Windows XP, one of my favorite tweaks is one that enables the "Copy To Folder" and "Move To Folder" options in the right click menu. After using Windows Vista for a few weeks I tried this "trick" and I was glad to see that it still working.

Recently we have received e-mails from our readers asking us to help them customize or restore their standard desktop icons. In order to answer their questions and also help other people having the same "problems", we decided to publish this article. We will show you how to customize the list of standard icons shown on the desktop, how to change their icons and how to restore the originals, in case you want the standard icons back.

This is the last in our series of articles about Instant Search. In the previous articles we tried to explain how Instant Search works and how to improve it. In this article we are going to show you how to customize the Start Menu search box so it will return the results you want. As you will see, the customization procedure is very simple.

We mentioned in our previous article that Instant Search uses an index to return the results of your searches as quickly as possible. The index is like a library that stores information about files, including the file name, the date it was modified and properties such as author, tags or rating. Instead of looking through your entire hard disk for a file name, Instant Search scans the index, which allows most results to appear in a small fraction of the time that a search without the index would have taken. By default, Instant Search indexes only a small number of folders such as the Start Menu, the names of the files opened, the Documents folder and the user's e-mail.

The index can be customized by the user at any time. You can remove locations or file types from the index in order to make Instant Search even faster or you can add even more locations or files types. In this article we will show you how you can configure the Windows Vista index to your liking.

One of the small but important changes in Windows Vista is the redesign of the Shut Down Start Menu options. Even if some people might have a different opinion, we think this design option is not very inspired. Compared to Windows XP it is more difficult to understand the options available and you need to take additional steps in order to shut down your computer or to put it into hibernate mode.

This is why we decided to create separate shortcuts for each option which you can easily place on your desktop.

One of the biggest changes in Windows Vista is the complete redesign of the Start Menu. While this change is a good thing for some people, others prefer to use the old style Start Menu. In this tutorial we will show you how to enable and configure the classic version of the Start Menu.

The procedure is very simple. Just follow these steps:

One of the greatest thing about Windows Vista™ is its looks. When you start it for the first time it certainly has some of the "Wow" factor Microsoft is talking about in its commercials. When you compare it to the previous Windows operating systems, the Windows Vista desktop looks really great. Even so, people will surely get bored by all the eye candy after a while.

So, what do you do when you get bored with the looks of your operating system? You do what MTV does - you PIMP it!