Anilrgowda

Five Vista tips, revisited and expanded
February 8th, 2007
By Ed Bott

Last year, during Windows Vista's long incubation, I published two collections of tips for beta testers working with release candidate versions of the software. In all, there were 10 tweaks for RC1 (with image gallery) and another 10 for RC2 (the full collection is here).

Now that Vista is officially released, I've begun putting together a new collection of 30 tips, which I'll kick off in a one-a-series beginning next Monday. As part of the research, I went back to those two older collections and pulled out five tips that were worth revisiting. In each case, I've checked the steps against the final release of Vista to confirm that the instructions still work, and I've added notes and comments based on more than three months' of experience with the final code.

Set up without a product key. I remember I was blown away when I discovered that this feature was going to survive the transition from beta to released software. In essence, every DVD copy of Windows Vista is a full-fledged trial version. If you're setting up an evaluation machine to try out Windows Vista or to test compatibility or performance of new piece of hardware or software, the last thing you want to do is activate the machine.

In the beta versions, the evaluation period was 14 days. In the released version, you can install any edition of Windows Vista and use it for up to 30 days, a deadline that you can extend up to three times for a total unactivated period of operation of up to 120 days

source:ZDNET Blogs