No help in sight for novices

Thanks to this free utility's well-designed user interface, managing our Vista settings was as simple as checking and unchecking our selections.

VistaTweaker uses tabs to organize all of Vista's settings. They are broken down into System, Windows UI, Internet Explorer, Software, Network, Performance, and Miscellaneous. The contents of each tab are broken down further into subcategories. Despite all of the settings options, we were never overwhelmed. From the interface, there are also options for checking or unchecking all of the options in one fell swoop. During our tests, we randomly made selections, from disabling notifications for new programs to disabling our UAC. Clicking the Apply button put all of our selections into play and we noticed the changes immediately without having to restart our PC, which was nice. The only feature in question was the Force Registry Reload command. Even after clicking on it, we weren't sure of its purpose, which brought us to our one complaint: the lack of any real Help feature. The program includes a link to the publisher's Web site, which was light on actual how-to guidance.

Novices should proceed with caution, since assistance is not provided, but for all other users, VistaTweaker is a very capable Vista management tool.