How to speed up your Vista OS by disabling the Aero look

Lets face it. Vista needs about 1 gb of RAM for some performance. The more RAM you have the better it performs in certain aspects. Those of you who do not have the luxory of having loads of RAM may benefit a lot from this tip. The most obvious performance hog in Windows Vista is the new Windows Aero look. (Aero is the name of the new Windows transparent feel that Vista has.) It's good looking no doubt, but nothing great - considering that you can do the same with Windows XP with "Windows Transformation pack". Shutting Aero off at will definitely make Vista lose its coolness value, but if your system is running sluggish, this is the first thing that you must do. Here is how you do it.

Step 1: Click on "Start > Control Panel > System". Alternatively, you can use a keyboard shortcut: press "Windows Key + Pause Break". Pause Break key is above/close to the "Num Lock" key.

Step 2: Once in System page, you'll see your computer's hardware information neatly displayed here. Look to the right hand side, and click on "Advanced system settings".

The System Properties has now opened up. This is the same as right-clicking on My Computer and then going to Properties on previous versions of Windows.

Step 3: You're already in the "Advanced" tab; click on "Settings" button in "Performance".

Step 4: You're now on the "Visual Effects" page. Here, simply click on "Adjust for best Performance", click "OK" and - Voila!

Windows Vista now looks just like Windows 98 or 2000.Also there is no drastic difference in visual appearance but it is now ready for pure performance.

In case you aren't too happy with the look, you can always go back and change the settings to "Adjust for best appearance". Or better still, instead of switching all the effects on, you can select what you'd like to enable or disable in the list given. For instance, you could scroll all the way down and switch on the last option only: "Use Visual Styles on windows and buttons". This would ensure that you get the Windows Basic look - not the complete Aero (transparent glass feel) - minus all the performance hogging stuff. In effect, a good balance between appearance and performance.