Should we just forget about Vista?

A Windows Secrets reader named Howard wrote in to ask about some advice he read on a popular PC tune-up Web site. The site recommended to its readers that they buy an XP computer, while that operating system is still available, and "forget about Vista."

No operating system is perfect. If perfection were the necessary standard for adopting an OS, we would all still be using the abacus. But wait! Abacus beads can give you splinters, so maybe we should just use our fingers and toes...

Vista has its warts, just like any other OS. But I'd personally have no qualms at all about buying a new notebook or PC that comes with Vista preinstalled. In fact, that's actually a pretty good way of avoiding the driver hassles that almost always occur with a major new release of an OS. If the hardware comes with Vista preinstalled and ready to run, you already have the drivers you need. Once you have Vista, then you can avoid the pitfalls and maximize the positives by using the information in this newsletter and in Brian's Windows Vista Secrets book to tune and tweak your copy of Vista.

The pros and cons of upgrading an older system to Vista are a little less clear. Driver hassles are more common than I thought they'd be, given Vista's long gestation. (What the heck were hardware makers doing all that time?) But, if your PC meets the Vista compatibility recommendations, as shown on Microsoft's hardware compatibility page, you shouldn't have any problems.

So, saying "forget about Vista" is sensationalistic and simplistic. Of course, the appearance of Vista didn't suddenly make XP obsolete. XP remains a mainstream operating system. If you're running a well-tuned, stable copy of XP and it meets your needs, there's no four-alarm reason to drop everything and upgrade to Vista right away. But that's not the same thing as saying we should forget about Vista completely.

Make no mistake, sooner or later, Vista is in your future. All of Microsoft's products have a defined and published "life cycle," and Microsoft will "retire" full support for XP Home and Professional on Apr. 14, 2009. That's just two years from now.

XP will continue to work after that date, of course. But you can think of Apr. 14, 2009, as the date when Microsoft's support attentions will turn away from XP. For the next five years thereafter (until 2014), online self-help for XP (e.g., the Knowledge Base) will remain available. Microsoft may, if it chooses, continue to release critical patches and updates.

But one way or another, if you want to continue to work with a Windows operating system, you will have to make friends with Vista. Therefore, I think it's just plain bad advice - downright silly, in fact - to say "forget about Vista." But it's also silly to say, "You're doomed unless you upgrade to Vista immediately." Both extremes are wrong.

Upgrade to Vista in the normal course of your hardware and software purchases. Then, with the good information provided by Brian and the contributors to this newsletter, you'll be able to use Vista as safely, enjoyably, and productively as possible.

How to determine which cookies can be deleted

If you've poked around in your browser's settings, you've probably discovered an easy way to see what cookies are being stored on your system. For example, in IE 7, click Tools, Internet Options, then in the Browsing History section, click Settings, View Files. In Firefox, it's Tools, Options, Privacy, Cookies, View Cookies. If you haven't done a cleanup in a while, you'll probably find a pile of cookies waiting for you.

Cookies are just ASCII text files created via your browser by Web sites you visit. Some cookies are very useful, storing login information for the Web sites you frequent, the date of your last visit (so the site can flag newer information for you), your favorite search terms, and so on. These cookies are worth saving. Other cookies really only benefit Web advertisers, and can be deleted with no negative consequences to you. But how do you tell which cookies are which?

Because cookies are plain text files, they can be opened and read with Notepad. Even so, the data stored inside a cookie may not be very easy to figure out.

That's where a tool like Karen Kenworthy's free Cookie Viewer can help. Cookie Viewer works with Internet Explorer and Firefox cookies, and presents all of a cookie's data in a comprehensive but easy-to-understand way. You can see when the cookie was created, by whom, when it expires, and more. The program also lets you delete any cookies you don't want.

Firefox users can also use any of several cookie-viewing add-ons, such as the free View Cookies download.

Once you know what cookies you want to keep, managing them becomes much simpler. For example, you can mark the cookies you want to keep as read-only, mass-delete the rest, and then clear the preserved cookies' read-only attribute.

Another alternative is to copy the cookies you want to preserve to a safe place, mass-delete the rest, and then copy the cookies back. If you have any skill with batch files or other scripting tools, you can easily automate this process.

There's also a huge number of cookie managers available for sale on the Web, but I've never found them particularly useful. As you can see from the above, managing cookies manually isn't particularly difficult. The first time you do it can be somewhat time-consuming, but subsequent cleanups can be easy and lightning-fast.

More on accessing Device Manager

The many ways you can accomplish tasks in Windows is one of the operating system's greatest strengths and, at the same time, one of its biggest drawbacks. Some see it as a weakness, because it can make Windows harder to learn and use. It's true that it makes our jobs at Windows Secrets more difficult, because it means that there are several ways of explaining how to access or manipulate different features.

For example, a few readers had trouble with the how-to instructions I gave on Apr. 5 for accessing Device Manager via Control Panel, Performance & Maintenance, System, Hardware, Device Manager.

The above process works for Control Panel's default Category View. But, if you're using the Classic View, the category headings, such as Performance and Maintenance, are not shown. Instead, you simply see a list of individual Control Panel applets. In Control Panel's Classic View, the clickstream to access Device Manager would be Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager.

But that just scratches the surface of the many ways to open Device Manager. You can also get to Device Manager by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting Properties from the context menu. From there, you click Hardware and then Device Manager.

Or, you can click Start, Run and then enter devmgmt.msc in the Run box. (In Vista, simply enter devmgmt.msc in the Search box.

Or, you can click Start, Run and then enter mmc to open the Microsoft Management Console. Once inside the Console, you can navigate to the Console plug-ins, usually located in /Windows/System32. You can recognize them by the .msc file extension.

For that matter, you can browse directly to the /Windows/System32 folder in Explorer and click on any .msc file to open that plug-in.

Or, use Windows' Search function to find all *.msc files, then click on the one you want from the search results list.

There are probably other ways to get there, too. You can see why we can't possibly list every way of accomplishing a task in every article - there isn't enough space or time!

The flexibility that Windows provides means that you can do things in the manner that feels most natural to you, whether this be typed commands or point-and-click navigation. This is one of the things I like most about Windows.

So, if a how-to instruction doesn't fit your situation exactly, don't worry. It's actually an artifact of one of Windows' most positive attributes: its incredible flexibility. If you don't find the exact answer you're looking for here, a little spelunking in the Windows Help system or online will almost surely find you a solution.