That said, the following sections detail some things you can do to make
Windows run faster and/or better.
226 | Chapter 5: Performance
Get Glass
Don??™t tell me the moon is shining; show me
the glint of light on broken glass.
??”Anton Chekhov
We??™re all suckers for a pretty face. You may or may not think ???Aero??? Glass,
the translucent new interface in Windows Vista, is actually pretty, but you
can??™t deny that it??™s a welcome change from the homely, cartoonish look of
XP, and a convenient way to see what??™s behind the window on top (see
Figure 5-4).
Glass also includes some flashy goodies, such as buttons that glow a cool
blue when you roll over them with the mouse, live thumbnail previews of
running tasks in the taskbar and the Alt-Tab window, and the silly Flip3D
Rolodex-style task switcher (Winkey+Tab).
If you got Windows Vista preinstalled on a new PC, and you??™re using the
Home Premium edition or better, then you??™re probably already using the
Figure 5-4. Glass??”the shiny, translucent interface included with every edition of Vista
except Home Basic??”is nice to look at, but may be hard to come by on older PCs
Make Your Hardware Perform | 227
Performance
Glass interface. But what if you??™ve upgraded an older PC, or have the Home
Basic edition of Vista? Or what if Glass simply doesn??™t work?
The problems with Vista??™s Glass feature are twofold. First, Glass has somewhat
hefty technical requirements, not the least of which is a fast video card
with at least 64 Mb of video memory (or more for higher resolutions), a
Vista-compatible video driver, and a 3D gaming feature called Pixel Shader
2.
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