Vista enables you to customize any gadget on the Sidebar by completely detaching it from the Sidebar. This makes it possible for you to then drag the gadget to any position you want on the entire desktop (to move a detached gadget, you just drag its icon around the desktop like you would any other desktop icon or title bar of any open window).

To detach a gadget, position the mouse pointer in the upper-right corner of the gadget and then drag the gadget off of the Sidebar to a new position on the desktop by using the handle that appears beneath the wrench. (This handle looks like eight tiny white dots in two columns.)

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In addition to customizing what information appears in the gadget (as in the RSS feed headlines shown in the Feed Headlines gadget), you can also customize the overall opacity of the gadget. Any gadget you add to the Sidebar is automatically displayed at 100% opacity (making it as opaque and non-see-through as possible). You can, however, lighten up any of your gadgets, thereby making them
more see-through by changing the gadget’s opacity.

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To display the Sidebar on the left side of your computer’s desktop or to make sure that it always appears on the top of other windows you have open on the desktop, you need to open the Windows Sidebar Properties dialog box. The easiest way to do this is by right-clicking somewhere in the Sidebar area on the right side of the screen (but outside any of the gadgets) and then clicking Properties
on the Sidebar’s shortcut menu.

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If you don’t love the shiny new Aero Glass look of Windows Vista or you find it to be totally distracting and a big waste of your precious computer resources ,follow these steps to get rid of the ritzy glassy look and go back to the old clunky opaque view of yesteryear:

1. Right-click anywhere on the Vista desktop and then click the Personalize item on its shortcut menu.

2. Click the Window Color and Appearance link in the Personalization Control Panel window.

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Windows Vista, like all versions of Windows before it, relies on a structure of Explorer windows that display all the document files and subfolders stored within it. The big difference in Windows Vista is the appearance of an entirely new type of folder called a virtual folder that can appear in these windows. Virtual folders are quite a bit different from the ones you create manually by actually moving and copying particular document files and subfolders into them. Instead, virtual folders are created from some type of search. Because of this, they can contain files that are not actually stored in the same folder (directory) and their contents are dynamically updated (as you add new files that fit a virtual folder’s search criteria, they automatically appear in that virtual folder). The best examples of virtual folders are found in the Documents window (opened by clicking the Documents link in the right-hand column of the Start menu). When this window opens, you see a list of Favorite Links in the Navigation pane on the left side of the window that includes links to two virtual folders: Recently Changed and Searches.

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1. Choose Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization > Theme.

or

Right-click an empty area of the desktop and choose Personalize > Theme.

2. From the Theme drop-down list, choose an existing theme as a starting point for creating a new one.

3. Choose the desired settings in Control Panel to change the theme.

4. When you’re finished making changes, click Apply in the Theme Settings dialog box.

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If  Windows Vista’s default appearance and sounds aren’t to your taste, you can change them with a different desktop theme– a stored set of colors, icons, fonts, sounds, and other elements that redecorate your desktop. You can pick a predefined theme or create your own.

To set a theme in Windows Vista:

1. Choose Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Personalization > Theme.

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Windows Vista has efficient methods to backup your data. Back up (copy) files from your hard drive to a CD drive, DVD drive, removable storage device, or another PC or drive on a network for the purpose of safeguarding or archiving your data, or for saving your computer configuration so that you can restore it in the event of a crash.

The Backup and Restore Center, new in Windows Vista, offers tools for backing up data as well as creating a restore “image” of your computer, which can be used to re-create the state of your PCincluding the operating system, applications, and settingsin the event of a hardware failure. It fixes a variety of shortcomings in the backup program built into Windows XP, such as not being able to back up across a network. On the other hand, it’s less flexible than the XP backup program because it doesn’t allow you to customize it to a great extent. You can’t, for example, choose specific folders, or files from specific folders, to be backed up. Instead, you have to back up all files of a particular file type, such as documents.

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