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Hurrah!, I actually found something in Vista that was not previous present in Windows XP and that is actually useful. Vista Ultimate includes Windows Calendar, a stand-alone calendar that supports To-do items, appointments, and reminders. Best of all, it supports the standard calendar format (.ics) that way you can import, download, and share calendars online. Previously I blogged here about how Mozilla had a stand-alone calendar application that was worthy of consideration, but was still in beta. I have to admit I switched to the Windows Calendar, its just faster and more stable than than Mozilla Sunbird. Windows Calendar also links to your Windows Contacts, it can be improved by making more options configurable such as the layout, its very simplistic. However, I find the calendar serves its purpose well. If you don’t like Microsoft or don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket you may stay away, but when it comes with the OS your doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least try it.

It can be a major headache to tweak and adjust Vista for performance, especially when they changed, I mean improved all the setting locations. I found a very helpful software that will do this for you, Tweak VI. The Basic edition has everything you need, but if you want to get more technical there are various other versions. I found the utility saved a lot of time, I only wished I knew about it earlier.