Why pay for a Microsoft Vista Tweaks Book if you can get a great book for free ? The guys from Tweakguides have created a 248 paged e-book in pdf format that contains information about Windows Vista that every user should know. The guide is divided into several categories including Memory Optimization, PC Security and Cleaning Windows. I personally would suggest to print out the guide - or at least the pages that you want to read and probably use on your computer.

I like to have the paper that I’m working with printed instead of reading them on the computer. On the other hand printing out 248 pages is not easy as well. Nevertheless everything is explained pretty well and links are attached to keywords. The guide to Windows Vista is missing screenshots if you ask me but this should not be a problem. Many guides use screenshots to fill more pages and make the book look bigger. This one does not.

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Parental Controls should be used to restrict access to Windows Vista, selected applications and the Internet for children that either share the computer with their parents or have their own computer. It is in my opinion very important to give your children a restricted user account instead of letting them use an administrative account or your own account. Parental Controls make it possible to add time limits for the usage, block or allow certain applications, allow only games that are suitable for the age of your children and use a filter for the Internet.

The first step would be to create a new account for each of your children if you have not done so. you can do this directly in the Parental Controls menu which is accessible in the control panel of Microsoft Windows Vista. You can turn on Parental Controls in the next step and decide if you want an activity report which logs the usage of the computer by this account. Last but not least you can control the settings for Internet, Time, Games and Programs. Let us take a look at all four options.

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I thought that I start my Windows Vista Tweaks blog by writing about all the Vista Tweak Softwares that are available on the Internet. Three months have passed since the initial release of Windows Vista and there are only a handful of applications that tweak the new Microsoft operating system. The first program that I’m going to analyze is called Tweak Vista by the Stardock Creation.

Tweak Vista has four tabs that are named DWM, UAP, IE7 Search and Environment. The acronyms are kinda confusing for new users and I would like to explain them in detail. DWM means Desktop Window Manager and UAP means User Account Protection. The first handles the look and feel of Microsoft Windows Vista while the second handles the new protection that was introduced by Microsoft in Vista.

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