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The downloadable tools for Vista are just starting to appear and  Preston Gralla from PC World has found a few that are pretty good … as a matter of fact, some are down right excellent.  In his article this month he describes four of his favorite Windows Vista downloads.  These tools let you easily create your own Sidebar gadgets, power up the Start menu’s search box, and tweak and hack Windows Vista .

So what tools does he highlight this month?

Amnesty Generator

The free program Amnesty Generator lets you take a gadget that you find on the Web, and (as if by magic) transform it into a gadget that can live on the Windows Vista sidebar. You don’t have to know a lick of code to perform this trick either; all you have to do is click a few buttons, and cut and paste.

Vista Manager

If you want to tweak Windows Vista six ways to Sunday, you should give Vista Manager a try. This remarkable program packs numerous utilities–each one of which lets you change multiple Vista settings–into a single interface.

Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover

The free Vista Shortcut Overlay Remover enables you to shrink or remove the annoying arrows that appear on shortcut icons on your Windows Vista desktop. Those arrows are particularly annoying in Windows Vista because the desktop icons–and the arrows–are so large.

Start ++

The free Start++ download turbocharges that search box, enabling you to create shortcut commands and aliases for dealing with all kinds of tasks, both on your PC and on the Internet. For example, if you want to search Google for the word Nibelung, simply type g Nibelung in the search box, and press Enter; Start++ will immediately launch a Google search for you, and display the results in your browser.

Check out Preston’s hints here at  PC World.  You will really like these downloads!

Jack Cook (2693 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook