Windows Vista in a Nutshell

Chapter 10. Managing Programs, Users, and Your Computer

An operating system by itself is a lonely thing—what’s the point of it, after all, unless you run programs on top of it to actually do things such as create and edit documents, perform calculations, and yes, even play games?

This chapter details the applications built into Windows Vista, including Notepad, WordPad, Windows Fax and Scan, and many others. It covers only applications that do not fit into specialized categories, which instead are covered elsewhere in the book. For example, Internet Explorer is covered in great detail in Chapter 5, Windows Mail gets its own chapter in Chapter 6, Windows Defender is covered in Chapter 8, Windows Media Player in Chapter 12, and so on.

The chapter covers not just the applications themselves, but how to manage them as well. So you’ll find out how to uninstall them, set file association defaults, make older applications run with Windows Vista using the Program Compatibility Wizard, and so on.

Also included in this chapter are details about how to set up and manage user accounts. User accounts should be used not only when multiple people use the same PC, but even when only one person uses Windows Vista, as a way to keep the computer and its files safe.

To help you find what you want fast, this chapter is divided into three sections: "User Accounts and Computer Management“; "Applications and Utilities“; and "Games.” Here is an alphabetical reference of entries in this chapter:

Cabinet (CAB) ...