I’ve been back using Vista again for a while now.  Since SP1 was released, I’ve found it to be a much more stable, and better performing OS than the RTM version.  Overall I’m pretty satisfied with my Windows Vista experience since SP1 and I’d like to share some of the minor things in Vista that make day to day operations easier than they were in Windows XP.  A lot have to do with files and folders, but there are a couple of other features I like too.

• When renaming files (whether right clicking and choosing rename, or hitting the F2 key), only the filename is automatically highlighted.  The file extension is left out, so that when you’re renaming you don’t accidentally remove the file extension.
• When creating a new folder, after you type the name of the folder and hit Enter, you’re automatically brought into the new folder.
• When saving or downloading a file, if you delete the file name in the File Name box so that you can enter a folder path (usually a UNC path to some network share), after you enter the folder path and hit enter to navigate there, the original file name is automatically entered back into the File Name box.
• When copying or moving files, you’re actually provided with some useful information about the progress.  Vista gives you information like how many files are left in the operation, as well as the actual amount of data left to copy.  To me this is much more relevant than just the estimated time remaining, which most of the time is pretty inaccurate.
• My Start menu gets pretty unruly at times with the amount of applications that I have installed.  The Start menu searching comes in handy when I’m too lazy to look through all of the folders.  I know this can be added to XP with some third party utilities but I’d much rather have it built into the OS.
• This next one isn’t exactly day to day, but still nice.  When renaming a computer on a domain, if you’re already logged in as a domain admin, it doesn’t re-prompt you for admin credentials.
• UPDATE: I forgot that I also really like the breadcrumbs trail in the address bar of Explorer windows.  It makes it really easy to navigate back up the tree with the least amount of clicking.

These are just some of the new features in Vista, but they’re ones that I really notice when using my machine to do regular day to day stuff.  Are there any new features in Vista that you really like?  Post them in the comments!

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