The vast majority of users try and avoid the System and
Maintenance part of Control Panel like the plague, at least
until things start to come unraveled and performance drops
off to the pace of an obese slug, and that's if you're
lucky. If you fall into the group that never updates or
backs up your system chances are also good you've never
visited this location. I'll run through each of the
categories down below to give you an idea of which ones have
some meat and which are just fluff.
Welcome Center - Out of everything in the
System and Maintenance section, the Welcome Center is
probably the 'fluffiest' of the entire group, although
in all fairness I have to say that for someone brand
spanking new to computers it could prove useful. The
'Get Started with Windows' section contains links to a
number of locations every user new to Vista should
visit, especially the Backup and Restore Center, Control
Panel, and the Windows Vista Demos.
On the other hand, I find the 'Offers from Microsoft'
section offensive; not because the offers are from
Microsoft but because I find advertising in any program
I've paid for to be offensive. I haven't looked at any
of the major PC makers offerings with Vista
pre-installed, but I suspect it would be very easy to
add another category called 'Offers from Name Your PC
Manufacturer' with even more crap offers from AOL, Real
Player and their ilk. The first couple of times Welcome
Center runs it's cute. After that it gets old pretty
quickly. When you've had enough just uncheck the box at
lower left and it disappears for good unless summoned
from Control Panel.
There are two hyperlinks beneath the Welcome Center
category. Both links take you right back to the Welcome
Center. This is the kind of thing that makes you shake
your head and wonder what the hell they were thinking.
Is it just to fill up space on the screen? Whatever the
rationale, it escapes me.
System - System, the section that
everybody loves to look at to see their initial Windows
Experience Index rating. The WEI may be the part that
gets all the press because I swear I've seen about 3
billion or so screen shots of this page in the last
week. The index has generated a lot of discussion and
it's still shrouded in mystery as to how it's formulated
and what it actually means. If you want a more detailed
breakdown of individual components just click the
Windows Experience Index link on your system.
Obviously this page shows the version of Vista that's
installed as well as the activation status of the
product and a way to change the product key, but the
most useful item is the Change Settings link that opens
the System Properties screen where you can change the
computer name, the domain, and the workgroup.
Figure 04
Windows Update - Anyone that has used Windows
should be familiar with Windows Update by this time. The
first pitch to turn on Windows Update takes place during
the installation process. If you decline at that point
(and I suggest you decline) then this is what you'll see
in Control Panel. Obviously Microsoft wants you to turn
on automatic updating by clicking the 'Turn On Now'
button. If you want to hand over control of the update
process to a third party, go ahead and click, but I
strongly suggest you use the 'View Advanced Options'
link instead. This allows you to select from another set
of options where you can control which updates are
downloaded and whether or not you want them installed on
your system.
There is also a link for
'Get Updates for More Products' at the bottom. This will
prompt you to authorize the use of Microsoft Update,
basically a Windows Update on steroids that includes
updates for other Microsoft programs such as Office.
Figure 05
Power Options - This one is pretty obvious and
just like the blurb in the window says, the power plans
help to maximize performance or conserve energy. The
Balanced plan is the default and you can see from the
cute little blue and purple circles how each plan
impacts battery life and system performance. As is
normally the case, predetermined plans rarely fit an
individual user situation so by all means use the
'Change Plan Settings' option to modify any of the stock
plans to suit your individual needs.
Figure 06
Indexing Options - Unless you're new to Windows
you've most likely run into indexing before. It has been
a bone of contention in XP since it was first released,
with most of the comments about it centering around how
useless it was and how it could bring the fastest of
systems to a grinding halt whenever it kicked in to
update the index. So far in my testing with Vista the
index has been vastly improved. Rather than index
everything on a drive, it indexes specific locations
where user data files are most likely to be stored. You
can easily modify the locations, adding new locations or
removing some of the default locations if you find them
unnecessary.
Figure 07
Problem Reports and Solutions - The Problem
Reports and Solutions section of Control Panel is really
a pretty spiffy little addition. Just because a problem
is recognized that doesn't mean there will be a
solution, but it's still a good jumping off point to try
and figure out what is happening with the system.
Figure 08
Performance Information and Tools - This is the
direct link to the new Windows Experience Index. It's
new, it's cute, it's pretty much useless, or one of
those pieces of fluff I mentioned earlier. The best I
can figure is the Windows Experience Index is similar to
penis-envy for operating system fanatics. How big is
your base score? My subscore is larger than your
subscore.
I guess under some
circumstances there might be some value in this thing,
but in the time I've been playing with Vista and loading
it on a number of different machines, I've found that
just because a system has a higher index it doesn't
necessarily mean the system is preferred over another.
Granted, if you're a high end gamer you want a system
with a high gaming graphics subscore along with a fast
processor and memory, whereas a business user might have
a different set of subscore priorities. I have systems
ranging from base scores of 1 to 5 and quite frankly all
of them run faster than anything I can use effectively.
So, take the scores for what they are worth and if you
finally get a screamer system that outshines all your
buddies, enjoy the bragging rights while they last.
Figure 09
Device Manager - This is pretty much the same
Device Manager present in previous Windows versions. All
the links under Device Manager bring you to this same
location. From here you can review all the devices,
double click on any single device to view its
properties, update and roll back drivers, disable
devices, or uninstall them if they are no longer needed.
Figure 10
Administrative Tools - Microsoft has spent a lot
of time focusing on security in Vista. As expected, many
of those changes are reflected in Administrative Tools.
Computer Management is one area that almost everybody
visits at one time or another, especially if you like to
tinker with the system. Unlike many of the other
categories in System and Maintenance, the links in
Administrative Tools truly are useful and ones you
should remember and become familiar with, especially
defragmenting, creating and formatting hard disk
partitions, and event logs. If you're running Vista Home
Premium the Print Management and Local Security Policy
items won't be included in Administrative Tools.
Figure 11
That's about it for
the System and Maintenance category. Obviously there is a
lot more to be looked at and that will follow in a series of
articles that dig deep into each specific category, but for
right now just explore and play around with the different
things that Vista includes. You may find you even have an
extra category or two I didn't list above. For example, I
purchased a Toshiba laptop specifically for testing purposes
because I wanted to see how Vista was being implemented on a
pre-loaded machine. It contains a category called Windows
Anytime Upgrade, so look around and see what you may have in
addition to what I've shown as well as what might be
missing.
