The difference between photos and photos you like often depends on the tools you are using. Windows Photo Gallery is a complete photo management tool that is included in all versions of Windows Vista. It allows users to organize their pictures collection, tag them, rate them and even edit them. The editing features are pretty basic (resizing, cropping, red-eye reduction, etc) but also very useful.
In this article you will find a video showing all of Windows Photo Gallery's features and how to work with it so that you effectively manage your pictures collection.

One of our readers asked us to create a tutorial about the Check Disk tool in Windows Vista. Even though nothing has changed about this tool since Windows XP, we decided to create such a tutorial and make sure all our readers understand what this tool does and how to use it.

Basically, Check Disk is a tool that verifies your disks for file system integrity, locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. This can be very helpful when you have some form of hardware failure which affects the integrity of your files. Unless you have some serious hardware problems, Check Disk can help you recover corrupted information from your hard disk, floppy disk or memory stick.

In November 2007 Microsoft launched a new e-mail client called Windows Live Mail. This client is one of the tools included in the Windows Live set of services and software products. Windows Live Mail is the successor of both Outlook Express and Windows Mail. This means that in the future it will be the only supported free e-mail client, and all development work going forward will only be on Windows Live Mail. For this reason, you might consider going to the download page and start using it.

But, before you do that, let's see what novelties Windows Live Mail has to offer.

If you will try to configure Windows Mail to retrieve your e-mail messages from services such as Windows Live Hotmail or MSN Mail, you will always receive the following error message: 'Windows Mail no longer supports the HTTP servers used by Hotmail and other web-based e-mail providers'. That's because, for reasons known only by Microsoft, HTTP forwarding is no longer supported in Windows Mail. You can retrieve your e-mail messages only if you use their newest e-mail client called Windows Live Mail.

In our future articles we will talk more about this new e-mail client. For now, I will show you how to configure it to connect to Windows Live Hotmail and MSN Mail, and access your e-mail from your computer.

This is the last article in our series about free security solutions for Windows Vista. In this article I will talk about firewalls and present to you the free alternatives I have managed to find for you. Unfortunately, there are not too many free firewalls for Windows Vista so this article will be pretty short compared to the others.

Windows Vista introduced a big number of changes to many applications, including Windows Explorer. In this article I will show you a few cool trips & tricks that can help when working with a large number of files. If you know other useful tips and tricks don't hesitate to share it with us in a comment.

In order to write this article I have searched and tested all the free antivirus solutions I could find on the internet. The available offerings can be split in two categories: antivirus solutions which offer real-time protection and on-demand virus scanners. To keep your system safe you need to install a solution that offers real-time protection. On-demand virus scanners are good only as a "second" opinion not as a solution for primary protection. You can use them to scan your PC from time to time, to make sure your antivirus solution did not miss a virus or something.

Some of our readers wanted to know how to update the album information for the tracks in their music library and how to add album covers, so that they show up in Windows Media Player. In this tutorial we will try to cover both topics as good as possible.

In my previous articles I have shown you how to customize the AutoPlay feature in Windows Vista and how to set your default programs for certain file types and protocols. In this tutorial I will show you how to set defaults for certain activities. These settings can be done from the Set Program Access and Computer Defaults window, where you will find options on how to change the default programs for activities such as web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, etc.