Windows Vista has an incredible amount of features and tools, many of which are almost totally undocumented and buried in the system somewhere. Administrative and troubleshooting tools particularly are now much more powerful and easier to use then ever before.

Here are six little features and applications in Vista which I think are quite useful:

Snipping Tool

The Snipping Tool was an application I didn’t even know existed till yesterday. This tool was introduced with Windows Vista (although it is not present in Vista Basic) but I just hadn’t come across it yet.

For several years I’ve been taking my private laptop to work, like most of my colleagues. Often I’m asked to set up a laptop for a guest talk, and many times I had to provide my own computer for the presentation.

Frankly, I hate to share my own, private laptop, however for a long time it was inevitable. Over that time people lost respect and thought it was OK to use my computer, just to look something up real quick.

It annoyed me to no end, so I unconsciously developed a few strategies to make it very unattractive to use my laptop. Let me share…
1) No Desktop Icons

A lot has been posted on Make Use Of about docks, widgets, toolbars, and whole packages to transform your default Windows interface into something more appealing. The possibilities are endless and a new tool has just joined the scene.

Stardock’s MyColors is surprisingly quick and easy to handle. The download took a while, but the installation itself was super fast. It made me wonder how well the program was going to perform. I was surprised to find that applying the included Diamond theme went just as rapid.