Roundup: 16 Tweaks to Windows Vista Look & Feel

We’ve come a long way in our coverage of Windows Vista, and it’s time to put together a roundup of all the articles that tweak the appearance of Windows Vista. If you’d like to suggest something that we left out, leave a comment with the details of what you’d like us to feature next.

 

Boot/Logon Screens

Customize Your Windows Vista Logon Screen
That default Vista screen gets boring after a while, but it’s easy to change.

Create a Custom Boot Logo for Windows Vista
You can customize that boring Windows Vista boot screen with a small utility.

Enable Hidden BootScreen in Windows Vista
Windows Vista has a built-in “Aurora” boot screen that you can enable with a quick tweak.

Fun Window Manager Stuff

Increase Size of Windows Vista Taskbar Previews
Make the built-in taskbar previews much bigger with a free utility by the brilliant Andreas Verhoeven.

Get the Beryl/Ubuntu “Desktop Cube” Effect for Windows
[update: This is no longer available for free, sadly, and is temporarily completely unavailable. This is why we should all support Open Source projects.]

Great Expose Clone for Windows Vista
This is one of the better clones out there, with many configurable features.

Mac OSX Expose Clone for Windows Vista
The first expose clone, but you might want to try the one above first.

Fonts and Icons

Tune Your ClearType Font Settings in Windows Vista
You can tune those fonts to look however you’d like.

Disable Shortcut Icon Arrow Overlay in Windows Vista
A perennial favorite, disabling the shortcut icons.

Why Do My Windows Vista Fonts Look Horrible?
Your computer manufacturer might have screwed up the default settings. 

Hide Desktop Icon Text on Windows Vista
Another favorite, hiding the text on your icons.

Aero and Stuff

Trim Windows Vista’s Bloated Window Borders
If you don’t like the huge Vista borders, you can make them smaller easily

Enable Slow-Motion Aero Animations in Windows Vista
Slow motion? What an odd registry hack.

Disable Aero on Windows Vista
Don’t like Aero? You can disable it easily.

Disable Flip3D in Windows Vista
Flip3D got you down because it’s so pathetic? Just get rid of it.

View Hidden 3D Benchmarks in Windows Vista
This one is pretty cool.