Vista, More Than Just a Pretty Face

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:29:05 GMT

Okay, okay so I talked about how the DWM on Aero enabled Vista machines makes applications more responsive. Now I want to talk about what makes the Vista upgrade more than just a new UI. I might split this over a few posts.

Partition Magic? Where we're going, we don't need Partition Magic.

Built into Vista is the ability to repartition your system automagically. Do you want to dual boot into RedUbuntuSuseBSD or whatever distribution of Linux suits your fancy, on your new Dell that came preloaded with Vista? Don't go pulling out DiskDruid, because Vista can do it for you. Just go the the Disk Management utility; right click on the partition you want to split; and select shrink volume...

And there you have it...a new partition for you to dual boot. Of course, I would just use Virtual PC to host the penguin in. But it's good to have options I guess. Oh and if you later decide that you are tired of Linux you can easily reassume the partition into the main one. Just delete the offending volume, then click on the system volume and select extend volume (also shown in the above picture grayed out). This isn't a new feature per se, you were able to do that in XP as well. But the Shrink Volume functionality is definitely new for Vista.

Brownie Points: Vista

Vista, More Than Just a Pretty Face

Partition Magic? Where we're going, we don't need Partition Magic.