Let's face facts. Anytime you migrate to a completely new operating system, there's going to be a learning curve. Vista is powerful, but it can also be a little intimidating for first-time users accustomed to living in an XP world. Although we anticipate that there will be a flood of utilities in the coming months that will allow Vista pioneers to tweak every possible setting, most people will want to start poking and prodding things about three seconds after they first boot up. That's where we come in.

 

These ten tips will help you do everything from making the most of Vista's cool Flip 3D effect to expanding the number of options when you're right-clicking on a file. And if you prefer to occasionally retreat to the comforts of XP, we'll show you how to bring back those old file menus. Most of all, we want to give you quicker access to the features that make Vista better than XP, including multi-file tagging, comprehensive parental controls, and the road-warrior-friendly Mobility Center. You'll see that moving to a new OS isn't so scary after all.