Okay, I appeared to Vista-bash a little in some of my recent Xomblurbs, so I'm sending a little love Vista's way.

When it comes to computers, finding the optimum software configuration for your hardware is paramount to achieving maximum performance from your machine. In today's impatient gotta-have-it-now world, a PC that is not fast is a PC that may find itself replaced by one that is fast.

With this in mind, Windows developed the Vista operating system to take advantage of new technology and more demanding computer software (read: games). As with any Micro$oft product, there were bugs everywhere and those bugs caused Vista not to quite live up to the hype. (Many people either rolled back their OS to XP or never even bothered to upgrade--that would be me.)

But, Vista isn't a total loss. With these five simple tips, you can tweak your Vista installation to improve its performance to the point where you will feel better about choosing Vista.

I am still happy running XP, especially with SP3 due out sometime next year, but this article helped me be more optimistic about Vista and--who knows--I may actually install it at some future date.