Brightrev

Windows keeps track of recently used programs and lists them prominently on the Start menu.  This is a nice feature because it puts the programs you use most within easy reach.  However, the problem is that the program entries tend to move up and down in the list depending on how often they're used.  This article shows how to replace the automatically generated list of recent programs with a custom list.

Print servers are something almost every company uses, but not everyone sets up in the optimum way.  Over a long time working with printers and servers, I've come up with a set of best practices that work well for setting up and supporting Windows printers and print servers.

Blogger Jeremy Toeman had problems with his Sony Vaio Vista laptop that were so bad that he actually gave up and bought a MacBook.  Ed Bott read about the problems and fixed them.  In short, Ed did a clean Vista install, tracked down missing drivers and disabled some startup items that were causing problems.  In the end, the system was actually stable and fast, which was an enormous change from the way it was shipped from the factory.

The lesson here is not that Vista can be fixed.  The lesson is that Microsoft would be insane to continue allowing PC makers to install crap software, cruddy utilities and junk security suites on Windows PCs.  Vista is a fine operating system, but my experience with it has only been on clean installs.  Most people get Vista in the state that this Sony was in, where the manufacturer loads so much junk on the PC that Vista does in fact appear to suck.  This is why Walt Mossberg panned his Vaio, which lead to a lot of other "Vista sucks" posts in the blogosphere.  Microsoft continues to allow this practice at their own peril.

Microsoft's Windows Sysinternals group writes a bunch of great utilities for finding out what's going on with Windows systems.  This article covers five useful functions of one the Sysinternals utilities, Task Manager-like application Process Explorer.