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Control Panel - System and Maintenance
The vast majority of users try and avoid the System and
Maintenance part of Control Panel like the plague, at least
until things start to come unraveled and performance drops
off to the pace of an obese slug, and that's if you're
lucky. If you fall into the group that never updates or
backs up your system chances are also good you've never
visited this location. I'll run through each of the
categories down below to give you an idea of which ones have
some meat and which are just fluff.
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Figure
01
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Welcome
Center
- Out of everything in the System and Maintenance section,
the Welcome Center is probably the 'fluffiest' of the entire
group, although in all fairness I have to say that for
someone brand spanking new to computers it could prove
useful. The 'Get Started with Windows' section contains
links to a number of locations every user new to Vista
should visit, especially the Backup and Restore Center,
Control Panel, and the Windows Vista Demos.
On the other hand, I find the 'Offers from Microsoft'
section offensive; not because the offers are from Microsoft
but because I find advertising in any program I've paid for
to be offensive. I haven't looked at any of the major PC
makers offerings with Vista pre-installed, but I suspect it
would be very easy to add another category called 'Offers
from Name Your PC Manufacturer' with even more crap offers
from AOL, Real Player and their ilk. The first couple of
times Welcome Center runs it's cute. After that it gets old
pretty quickly. When you've had enough just uncheck the box
at lower left and it disappears for good unless summoned
from Control Panel.
There are two hyperlinks beneath the Welcome Center
category. Both links take you right back to the Welcome
Center. This is the kind of thing that makes you shake your
head and wonder what the hell they were thinking. Is it just
to fill up space on the screen? Whatever the rationale, it
escapes me. |
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Figure
02
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Backup and Restore Center
- The one item that likely causes more grief for users
than any other single item is the lack of a current,
verified backup. It's a fact that users simply don't
like to take the time or put forth the effort to back up
and protect their valuable data. Prior to Vista, the
backup routine in Windows has always been rather suspect
in its usefulness. Vista shows a lot more promise,
providing a way to back up files and folders as well as
create an image of the entire PC. One thing you need to
understand is Backup and Restore Center is a different
animal than System Restore. There is a link on Backup
and Restore Center to System Restore, but they function
differently with Backup and Restore Center giving more
flexibility as to what files and locations are
protected.
Again, there are two links under Backup and Restore Center
and they both lead to exactly the same place, so it makes no
difference what you actually click. |
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Figure
03 |
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System
- System, the section that everybody loves to look at to see
their initial Windows Experience Index rating. The WEI may
be the part that gets all the press because I swear I've
seen about 3 billion or so screen shots of this page in the
last week. The index has generated a lot of discussion and
it's still shrouded in mystery as to how it's formulated and
what it actually means. If you want a more detailed
breakdown of individual components just click the Windows
Experience Index link on your system.
Obviously this page shows the version of Vista that's
installed as well as the activation status of the product
and a way to change the product key, but the most useful
item is the Change Settings link that opens the System
Properties screen where you can change the computer name,
the domain, and the workgroup. |
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Figure 04 |
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Windows Update
- Anyone that has used Windows should be familiar with
Windows Update by this time. The first pitch to turn on
Windows Update takes place during the installation process.
If you decline at that point (and I suggest you decline)
then this is what you'll see in Control Panel. Obviously
Microsoft wants you to turn on automatic updating by
clicking the 'Turn On Now' button. If you want to hand over
control of the update process to a third party, go ahead and
click, but I strongly suggest you use the 'View Advanced
Options' link instead. This allows you to select from
another set of options where you can control which updates
are downloaded and whether or not you want them installed on
your system.
There is also a link for 'Get Updates for More Products' at
the bottom. This will prompt you to authorize the use of
Microsoft Update, basically a Windows Update on steroids
that includes updates for other Microsoft programs such as
Office. |
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Figure 05 |
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Power Options
- This one is pretty obvious and just like the blurb in the
window says, the power plans help to maximize performance or
conserve energy. The Balanced plan is the default and you
can see from the cute little blue and purple circles how
each plan impacts battery life and system performance. As is
normally the case, predetermined plans rarely fit an
individual user situation so by all means use the 'Change
Plan Settings' option to modify any of the stock plans to
suit your individual needs. |
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Figure 06 |
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Indexing Options
- Unless you're new to Windows you've most likely run into
indexing before. It has been a bone of contention in XP
since it was first released, with most of the comments about
it centering around how useless it was and how it could
bring the fastest of systems to a grinding halt whenever it
kicked in to update the index. So far in my testing with
Vista the index has been vastly improved. Rather than index
everything on a drive, it indexes specific locations where
user data files are most likely to be stored. You can easily
modify the locations, adding new locations or removing some
of the default locations if you find them unnecessary. |
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Figure 07 |
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Problem Reports and Solutions
- The Problem Reports and Solutions section of Control Panel
is really a pretty spiffy little addition. Just because a
problem is recognized that doesn't mean there will be a
solution, but it's still a good jumping off point to try and
figure out what is happening with the system. |
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Figure 08 |
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Performance
Information and Tools
- This is the direct link to the new Windows Experience
Index. It's new, it's cute, it's pretty much useless, or one
of those pieces of fluff I mentioned earlier. The best I can
figure is the Windows Experience Index is similar to
penis-envy for operating system fanatics. How big is your
base score? My subscore is larger than your subscore.
I guess under some circumstances there might be some value
in this thing, but in the time I've been playing with Vista
and loading it on a number of different machines, I've found
that just because a system has a higher index it doesn't
necessarily mean the system is preferred over another.
Granted, if you're a high end gamer you want a system with a
high gaming graphics subscore along with a fast processor
and memory, whereas a business user might have a different
set of subscore priorities. I have systems ranging from base
scores of 1 to 5 and quite frankly all of them run faster
than anything I can use effectively. So, take the scores for
what they are worth and if you finally get a screamer system
that outshines all your buddies, enjoy the bragging rights
while they last. |
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Figure 09 |
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Device Manager
- This is pretty much the same Device Manager present in
previous Windows versions. All the links under Device
Manager bring you to this same location. From here you can
review all the devices, double click on any single device to
view its properties, update and roll back drivers, disable
devices, or uninstall them if they are no longer needed. |
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Figure 10 |
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Administrative Tools
- Microsoft has spent a lot of time focusing on security in
Vista. As expected, many of those changes are reflected in
Administrative Tools. Computer Management is one area that
almost everybody visits at one time or another, especially
if you like to tinker with the system. Unlike many of the
other categories in System and Maintenance, the links in
Administrative Tools truly are useful and ones you should
remember and become familiar with, especially defragmenting,
creating and formatting hard disk partitions, and event
logs. If you're running Vista Home Premium the Print
Management and Local Security Policy items won't be included
in Administrative Tools. |
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Figure 11 |
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That's about it for the System and Maintenance category.
Obviously there is a lot more to be looked at and that will
follow in a series of articles that dig deep into each
specific category, but for right now just explore and play
around with the different things that Vista includes. You
may find you even have an extra category or two I didn't
list above. For example, I purchased a Toshiba laptop
specifically for testing purposes because I wanted to see
how Vista was being implemented on a pre-loaded machine. It
contains a category called Windows Anytime Upgrade, so look
around and see what you may have in addition to what I've
shown as well as what might be missing. |
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