Windows Vista's Graphics: New AERO Features

Windows has revolutionized its graphics with the new AERO GUI. AERO, which expands as Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open, is the name of the new Windows Graphical User Interface (GUI). AERO features like glass window borders, 3D flip, live thumbnails, etc., make Windows look a lot different and more visually appealing than its previous versions.

AERO is available in these versions of Windows Vista: Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise, and Vista Ultimate; the Home Basic version lacks it. The requirements are roughly these: 1 GB of system memory with 128 MB of graphics memory at the minimum, 1GHz processor, DirectX 9 compatible graphics driver with WDDM facility (Windows Display Driver Model) and AGP 8.x or PCI-Extended, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, 15 GB HDD free space, DVD-ROM drive, etc.

The Features of AERO

1.Flip-3D: This enables the windows on the desktop to be viewed in three dimensions. When a number of application windows are open in Vista, you can press Windows key + tab. This will show the windows on the screen in a 3D stack, which you can flip through to get to the desired window. Users can flip through the windows using the key combination or by scrolling with the mouse wheel.
2.AERO Glass: The windows in Vista have translucent borders. The borders blur the background to achieve this effect. The window in focus has its close button in red color, helping determine the topmost window in case so many windows are open side by side. The AERO Glass effect is present also on the start menu.
3.Live Thumbnails: You can view what is happening in a particular window, which is minimized, by placing the mouse pointer over its task bar button. This shows the contents of the window live on a thumbnail. The feature is available also when we use Alt + Tab (Windows Flip).
4.Support for High-resolution Monitors: Vista AERO supports high-resolution monitors, so that you can get a visually stunning picture on smaller screens. Vista can boost the graphics of certain programs to as much as 144 dpi (dots-per-inch), thereby making the view rich in detail.
5.High Performance Desktop: AERO supports very high performing and smoother desktops. The open windows glide across the screen smoothly as you move them. They do not show any latency, redraw ‘specters,’ etc., which are common in older GUIs.

Customization:

Is AERO customizable? Absolutely! For this, you have to go to the Control Panel applet, Appearance and Personalization->Personalization, using which you can edit the features in AERO. You can edit anything from Display Settings, Visual Appearance, Desktop Background, Screen Saver, Sound Effects, Mouse Pointers, or Theme from this dialog.

The Visual Appearance link opens a new window allowing deeper customization to AERO, such as Color Schemes (Aero, Frost, Smoke, Seafoam, Heritage, Sky, Heart, or Candy); Enable or Disable Translucent Glass; Color Mixer, which gives more profound customization to the already selected color scheme; and Open classic appearance properties. Color Mixer can also set the brightness, contrast, and saturation.

AERO is great in visual appeal. It will make Vista the most visually stunning OS in the market ever. However, AERO can gorge up much of the resources, thereby making the system performance a little low. This is particularly true in systems fulfilling just enough of the requirements. In such cases, you might want to switch off the AERO feature. This can be done from the Control Panel applet said above, Personalization. From Windows Color and Appearance, you can select the classic theme for Windows.

Windows Vista Readyboost and Superfetch

System performance depends on various factors. Microprocessor speed is one thing. System memory or (RAM [Random Access Memory]) is another; cache memory also has a part to play in performance. We have a limit to the processor power, we can’t increase it; we cannot increase also the cache, which resides inside the processor. However, we can increase the system memory and optimize it for better performance. Microsoft Windows Vista has two great built-in applications for memory boosting and high performance. They are Windows Readyboost and Superfetch. These programs of the new Windows are reviewed in this article. In the first part, Microsoft Readyboost is focused on, and the second part is dedicated to Microsoft Superfetch.

Windows Readyboost

In the history of Microsoft Windows, this is the first time that Windows Operating System introduces an artificial RAM addition program. RAM is a very necessary component to boost system performance. And Windows Vista naturally requires a lot of system memory (specifically for its visual appeal, Microsoft AERO). How to supplement this need, when you don’t have enough of system memory? One option is using the virtual memory by configuring the hard drive (it requires a little more technical knowledge!). But the hard disk has limitations in terms of speed and capacity. It is not at all a great replacement to system RAM, and you cannot notice any performance difference by increasing it. In this case, as boon to the low memory systems, Microsoft Windows Vista introduces Readyboost, a memory addition program.

With Readyboost, you can use a non-volatile storage device such as a Flash drive to give more memory to the system. The Flash disk drive, which is a USB (Universal Serial Bus) device, can be plugged into the USB slot on the back of your system. USB Flash storage devices are usually very fast with high data transfer rates. So, it can serve as a memory cache, when the normal system RAM is filled up. Since Flash drive is accessible faster than the system hard drives, it is an ideal choice for this purpose. You can also use SD (Secure Digital) memory card.

Using Readyboost is very easy. When you insert a USB Flash drive or SD card, Vista checks whether its performance is good enough for using as RAM. If found OK, you will get an alert asking whether to use the USB storage device as RAM. You can use either the whole drive or part of it for the purpose.

Windows Superfetch

When you work on MS Windows, there may be many background tasks running without your knowledge. These background programs, which usually run from the system tray, use up part of the available RAM, thereby making the system performance lower. In previous versions of MS Windows, these background tasks run randomly accessing the system memory (also the virtual memory). And this can make the system slower.

To fight this issue, Windows introduced a new program along with Readyboost, Microsoft Superfetch. Microsoft Readyboost uses Superfetch to load files and programs into the Flash memory device faster. Superfetch can monitor the user programs and background programs: their memory needs, priority, and frequency of usage.

Superfetch checks which of the applications are used the most by the user, and loads them into the system memory before execution. So, you can get access to them readily whenever you want. Also, Superfetch can make the system performance greater by changing the priority of the programs (user programs have higher priority and system tasks have lower). In this way, Superfetch dramatically increases the system performance by working with Readyboost.

These applications definitely are a welcome addition to Microsoft Vista; they will make working with the system much faster. One major factor is that in Vista, at a designated amount of RAM, the performance you can get is much better than that you can get with Windows XP, at the same amount of memory. So, though Vista is resource-thirsty, it can optimize the performance much better. This is what makes Vista a great OS, in terms of visual appeal (by Microsoft AERO features) and system performance.