Congratulations.

Nice article Todd...Congrats !!

Congrats on your published article!

WTG Todd !!

Awesome Todd. Soon you'll be on the cover of Technology Review magazine...LOL
You probably have seen this already, but incase you haven't, here it is. It's about the when you teamed up with that company that provides lottery results on your cell phone.
http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/341648.htm

Thanks everyone for the nice comments!

Thanks Pac, I did see that -- I wrote the press release! ;-)

Very nice comprehensive article, Todd.

I always felt .ini files should be used more often for various things. It seems to have been downhill with each new Windows version.

Only thing, I got rid of the sidebar almost immediately. Hate distractions on my desktop.   I take it you really like that feature!   Actually, I am not liking too much about Vista at all.   I've got programs that Vista doesn't like and if I don't find work arounds, to make them run, going to forget all about Vista.

TC, there are solutions for programs that don't run well on Vista:

1. Try running the program with Administrator rights, and see if that helps (often it does). You can do that by right-clicking on the icon and selecting "Run as Administrator" (followed by a UAC prompt).

2. If that doesn't work, try running the program in compatibility mode. Right-click on the icon and choose Properties. Click the compatibility tab, check the Compatibility checkbox, then choose an environment to run it in.

3. If a program just won't work no matter what, you may want to consider getting a software package called "VMware". It is an astoundingly great piece of software that lets you create multiple "virtual machines" on your computer, running side-by-side with Vista. Microsoft has a free program called Virtual PC that does the same thing, but it is not as good. If price is a deal-breaker, then go with the MS version, but if at all possible, go for VMware.

And yes, I do like the sidebar a great deal. It really healps to have a widescreen monitor, but I run it on all types of screens.

Todd, I appreciate your input.   

The programs happen to be DOS type, although they will run in a window....and steps 1,2 and 3 don't solve it. Vista doesn't allow full screen DOS programs.   But MS says...go back to XP video drivers for a work around.   http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926657

Before ATI would give me a download URL, I had to convince them that MS did indeed suggest the XP drivers.   Then after several communications they finally said, "OK, experiment, but we don't support it."   Then more communications and they finally gave me a download link. It was a battle that lasted days. LOL

So, I have finally downloaded the drivers, now I am waiting for my mind to be alert enough to uninstall the Vista drivers and replaced them with XP drivers.

I did look into virtual machine/sandbox programs but I need the programs to work properly within Vista - for instance one program is a file manager that I don't want to give up. etc;

If I am able to get these to work, I may even discover some other problem Window software - but I would suspect your steps #1 and #2 will get those running.

Again thanks for taking time to help.

Well, you could have tried steps 1 & 2, but step 3 would have solved the problem -- no matter what -- so I'm thinking you skipped that step. That's because VMware loads a copy of the actual operating system, not some kind of simulator. In truth, there is *nothing* that won't run in a virtual machine.