Turning Aero Off

Even if you’re not wild about transparency and animation, there’s plenty to like about Aero. Smoother window dragging, the preview icons on the taskbar, and the improved task-switching features (Alt+Tab and Windows logo key+Tab) are well worth the price of admission—for most users. Nevertheless, admission is not entirely free; the Aero interface uses more graphics memory than the non-Aero interface—especially because achieving smoother window movement requires Aero to store the contents of all open windows in video memory, not just the windows that are currently visible.

If Aero slows you down or annoys you for any other reason, you can turn it off. In the Window Color And Appearance dialog box (shown in Figure 4-1), click Open ...

Get Windows Vista® Inside Out Deluxe Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.