Instant Search is one of the most useful new tools included in Windows Vista. It allows users to search and find everything on their computer: applications, e-mail messages, documents, music, photos and any other types of content. You can find Instant Search almost anywhere within the operating system: in the Start Menu, in the Control Panel, in every Explorer and also in other programs like Windows Media Player or Windows Photo Gallery.

In order to return results quickly, Instant Search needs to build an index with the content of your computer. By default, Instant Search indexes only a small number of folders such as the Start Menu, the names of the files that have been opened, the Documents folder, and the user's e-mail. It can also be configured to index only the type of content and the locations chosen by the user.

Instant Search is contextual and it shows results based on your current activity. This is why it will display different results depending on the location where you make the search. Even though, in theory, contextual search is not very complicated, some people will need some time to get used to it. This is why, in this article, we will try to explain how Instant Search works.

Some of our visitors searched the site for keyboard shortcuts to various actions. We searched for a complete list of Windows Vista keyboard shortcuts and we found it on the Microsoft Windows Vista Help pages. The complete list is pretty big and some of them are not so useful or easy to remember. This is why we tried to compact it a little and we decided to publish in this article only those which we found useful.

These days, Microsoft launched an exciting computer called Surface. Microsoft Surface™ is the first commercially available "surface computer" that allows users to manipulate digital content using natural motions, hand gestures or physical objects.

Surface is a 30-inch (76 cm) display in a table-like form factor, 22 inches (56 cm) high, 21 inches (53 cm) deep, and 42 inches (107 cm) wide. It uses cameras to sense objects, hand gestures and touch. This user input is then processed and the result is displayed on the surface using rear projection. The software runs on Windows Vista and it has Ethernet, wireless and Bluetooth connectivity.

After years of using Windows XP, most people (including myself) got bored with the standard startup sound. This is the reason why, after a while, I chose to disable it. With the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft wanted to bring a new startup sound. So they hired a team of 20 composers, sound designers, engineers, and developers to create the new Windows Vista startup sound. It took them 18 months and 500 entries from which the final sound was picked and embedded in Windows Vista.

Even though the new startup sound is pretty good, just like with any other new thing, it will become old after a while and people will get bored with it and will probably choose to disable it.

Nowadays, SATA hard disk drives are very common. They offer a series of advantages compared to older models, one of them being the improved performance. Windows Vista not only offers built-in support for SATA hard disks, but it also allows you to squeeze a little more performance from them.

So... how do you increase the performance of your SATA hard disk?

As many other people, I installed Windows Vista on my system but I decided to keep Windows XP for gaming and other tasks which, at least for now, work better on XP. When you have multiple partitions and hard disks, one of the challenges of having a dual boot system is keeping the same drive letters in both operating systems.

When I installed Windows Vista for the first time I did not pay attention to this detail and had them assigned in a confusing way. In Windows XP, the "cinema" partition had the letter G: and in Windows Vista "H:", while the "lavoro" (work) partition had the letter "D:" in Windows XP and "E:" in Windows Vista.

That confused not only myself but also the other users that worked on the same computer. So... what can you do to avoid such a scenario?

One of the most searched topics on our site is "how to map a drive". Unfortunately, until now, the searches on this topic didn't return any result for our users. As a consequence to this, we decided to create this article in which we show you how to create a drive mapping in Windows Vista.

For those of you who don't know it, a drive mapping is a letter assigned to a disk or drive. The most common drive mappings are A: for the floppy disk and C: for the primary hard disk. If you are on a network, a drive mapping can reference remote drives to which you can assign a letter of your choice. For example, you can use the letter Z: to refer drive C: or a network server or a specific shared folder to which you have access to.

As you will see for yourself, the procedure of creating a map drive in Windows Vista is very simple. Just follow these steps:

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.

ReadyBoost is a new disk caching technology included in Windows Vista that uses flash memory to boost your system performance. It can use any form of flash memory such as a USB 2.0 drive, SD card or CompactFlash.

ReadyBoost functions as a complement for SuperFetch, giving SuperFetch another place to cache data. SuperFetch is a technology included in Windows Vista which prioritizes the programs you are currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work. This technology tracks your computer usage behavior and intelligently preloads applications into memory. This helps improving the general performance of your system and the loading times of your core applications. While SuperFetch loads by default all the necessary files into the main memory, ReadyBoost complements it by loading data into alternate storage devices such as USB 2.0 flash memory sticks.

While the USB flash drives are not as fast as the main memory, they can be faster than a hard disk drive and enabling ReadyBoost can free up some of the main memory which could be used for other tasks and applications.