Speed up your Vista Start Menu

You may have noticed how Vista often just doesn’t seem as fast as your old xp installation when it comes simple navigation around your desktop and folders. Menus take that extra fraction of a second to open, folders take forever to copy and context menus are annoyingly slow.

What a lot of people don’t know however is that this isn’t to do with the infamous resources hogging OS, but is largely just perceived or simply part of system settings. For example explorer always waits exactly 12 seconds before estimating how long it will take to copy a file - creating a impression of lagging. Also in xp copying files would seem to take less time because the system would dismiss the copy progress bar before the job was completely finished. In Vista it waits for the files to be copied completely from the system memory before dismissing.

I will be providing you with a few simple Registry edits to help speed up your system. Here is the first one today:

Load your Start Menu faster

Open either Start Menu or do window+R and type Regedit and press enter

This opens up the Registry editor for your system files. I recommend making a copy or backup of these files.

I didn’t. But I’m dumb… you should.

In the Registry Editor click through

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.

In here you will find a registry key called

MenuShowDelay

This controls the delay time between clicking the Start Menu and the menu opening up. Open it up and you’ll see the default value is 400. Change this to 50 and press okay.

You should notice the start menu opens up much more rapidly now.

Why not make the key even less?

Its pretty pointless, but go for it if you want. These values are in milliseconds. You’ll definitely see the difference between 400 and 50, but from 50 to less you just wont notice anything.

Clusty

Alrite as I’m currently in the middle of some University Assignments I’ll just give a real quick post to show you Clusty.

Its a nice new web search engine. I haven’t even used it myself yet, but check it out yourself here.

I like the look of the direct Wikipedia search.

Desktop Images

Some of the Vista wallpapers are pretty impressive images - but if by now you have tired of the golden field or even the craggy ocean shoreline, its time to check out Desktopography.

Desktopography turns desktop backgrounds into fine art.

The  current showcase is the 3rd Desktopography Exhibition since the website began in 2005. The images are high resolution, often up to 1900×1200. Some have a tag on the image with the creators name or the title of the image, but they are not watermarks and fit into the image seamlessly.

These three are my favourites from the 2007 showcase, but check it yourself, there are many, many more amazing images.

Desktopography Website

Digsby

Well just when LemmingsNeverDie thought he was cool with his invite codes for Digsby it no longer becomes necessary =P

Just a quick update on the Instant Messaging App for you which as you can see above has just released a substantial update and is now officially in public beta. The Digsby Blog says:

Since going into private beta testing just six weeks ago, we have released 15 new builds which included 35 major changes, 53 enhancements, and 109 bug fixes.

The feature list has also been further extended to include:

• Twitter Support – this has been the most requested social network by far. Enjoy!
• Audio/Video Chat – we partnered with TokBox to provide A/V support across IM networks. Implementing native A/V support for all the protocols is still on the roadmap and we will add this functionality in the future.
• Spell Check – we added inline spell checking for the English language (us/gb/ca). We will add 50+ other languages very shortly.
• “Listening to…” Status – there is a new option in the status dropdown which sets your status message to the song you are currently listening to in iTunes or Winamp. We will add support for other media players in the future.
• Block Support – you can now block contacts from the right click menu on the buddy list or the dropdown menu at the top-right corner of the IM window.
• Full Screen Preferences – there is a new set of preferences in the “Advanced” tab for what Digsby should do when you are running full screen applications such as games.

Download Digsby

Triple A

It can be frustratingly hard to find what you want on the Internet. I searched for quite a while for a free clone of the boardgame Axis and Allies.

I figured that considering the popularity of the game and the size of the Internet someone must have made a free version of the game. Unfortunately I didn’t come up with anything.

A little while later I stumbled across exactly what I was looking for during a completely different search:

 TripleA is a great little Axis and Allies game. Perfect for the times when you feel like a game but can’t be bothered setting up the actual boardgame (which often takes me as long as half an hour) or when you have no one to play against.

Each Team can have either a Human or Easy AI. The AI seems pretty fair, but I haven’t played the game enough yet to see if it is too easy or becomes too predictable.

LemmingsNeverDie loves this game for being free, simple and for covering the complete rule base of the original boardgame.

Download TripleA

Weekend

Alrite, since it is Easter Weekend I probably wont be posting at all, so apologies to my non-existant readers! LemmingsNeverDie will return next week… bigger, better and more generic then before.

Digsby

I know I know.

It may be more then a little desperate to be revisiting IM app Digsby so soon, but I have managed to get 250 invite codes for those of you who may wish to try it out yourself. Just be aware this is still a beta release.

The main thing you’ll notice is still quite slow connection times and occasional connection dropouts. If this happens don’t bother clicking reconnect, just restart Digsby and you shouldn’t have any trouble.

Invite code: Lemmingsneverdie

Download Digsby

Real Desktop

“Give your ordinary desktop new life” suggests Schillergames, the creators  of Real Desktop, “enjoy the fascinating dynamics of a revolutionary graphic rendition of your desktop.” And that’s not all! “Your icons behave now, thanks to the powerful physics-engine, that you can touch and move like on a real desk.”

To me the premise of a 3D desktop sounds maybe only a tad more useful then 3D email, but for some of you this may be your kind of thing. Real Desktop converts your 2D desktop into a virtual desktop where the icons act as files strewn across your workspace and can be picked up, throw and stacked.

The software costs $25.95 to buy, but you can try out the free version called ‘Real Desktop Lite’. The Lite version lacks all customisation features, but use it for a couple minutes and your curiosity should be adequately satisfied. A need for further investment should seem unlikely.

Schillergames promises Real Desktop is light on system resources. I found that to be largely true, the software didn’t noticeably cause any slowdown, but the program itself lags quite significantly as move icons around.

I suggest you just spend a couple minutes organising your desktop rather then much longer fiddling around with a 3D desktop environment.

Download Real Desktop

Speed up Vista

This is one really simple way to reduce some of the ‘friction‘ you may be experiencing while using Windows Vista. The new start menu is a definite improvement over XP, but while browsing and searching for programs you may have some amount of lag. If you follow these instructions you should see an immediate improvement in the start menu performance.

Open Start Menu

1. Right click the menu and select ‘Properties’

In Properties select ‘Customise…’

In the Customize Start Menu you will find the option to Highlight newly installed programs.

Uncheck this.

This worked for me, hopefully it will for you too. Wether this is something Microsoft fixes up in Vista SP1 remains to be seen.

JelloCar

“The game is about driving a squishy car through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.”

Forget how boring that sounds and just download it and play. This is a fantastic and addictive little game that utilises ’soft body physics’ to give a frustrating, yet entertaining experience. The physics of the car and world are very impressive, as are the simple graphics.

The game also comes with a level editor.

Download