| " yet? By now, having had several months to put the new operating system through its paces, you've gone beyond the novice user's infatuation with the glitzy new Aero interface. And you're probably inured to the " " and add some slightly more sophisticated options to your Vista palette. Accordingly, here are some tips to tune your Vista installation. We've got hints on using video wallpaper, making Vista's Flip 3-D function work more like the Mac's, tuning Firefox's user interface so that it more closely resembles Internet Explorer, and where to get a hold of nifty Sidebar Gadgets. Plus, how to turn off the UACs (and why you should think twice about that)." "Windows DreamScene, the video-enabled wallpaper that's the über-eye-candy of the Vista ecosystem, is finally out of its prolonged preview phase. Was it worth the wait? Kind of." " My experience with DreamScene proved that some work well, while others can be decidedly funky. Even on a dual-core system -- I'm running a 3.2-GHz, Intel Pentium D 940 -- DreamScene sucks up a lot of processing power. One other caveat: my sense is that DreamScene doesn't appear to work and play all that well with any security programs you're likely to have on your machine." " Of course, the big software existential question surrounding DreamScene remains: What is the point? These things don't " " anything. They just look cool, which only reinforces the rap on Vista that it's an operating system whose raison d'etre is its eye candy. Setting that aside--because, again, these backgrounds are nothing if not pleasing distractions--here's how they work:" "Currently, DreamScene is only intended for owners of Vista Ultimate -- at around $250, the most expensive of the " " of the operating system. As with many of the Vista command sequences, accessing DreamScene requires an idiosyncratic combination of the intuitive and the idiotic. Here's the sequence:
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