No doubt the Vista User Account Control (UAC) is the single biggest irritation in the whole operating system, but if you are thinking of turning it off altogether, you better think twice. UAC is a security feature that can help prevent unauthorized changes to your computer. By turning it off, you will lose all protection and put yourself in great risk of virus and malware attack. Hopefully, you have not forgotten that Windows has the most number of virus attack in the World.

A better way to deal with the UAC is to tweak it such that it continues to run in the background without popping out the annoying prompt every few seconds. Here are four software that you can use to make your UAC less annoying without compromising your security.

For some of you who have setup Windows Vista as the guest VM in your Ubuntu Virtualbox, you might have some difficulties in getting the Vista guest to access the shared folder in your Ubuntu host. If you are having this problem, here is the way to mount the shared folder on your Vista guest.

Can’t stand the lengthy process to start each application, or looking for more efficient way to increase your productivity? Here are some Windows Vista shortcut keys that might be useful (most of them work in Windows XP as well):

For writing or creating office document, press:

For Ubuntu Gutsy users who find that they can’t live without Windows, or just want to give Vista a try, here’s your savior: VMware Server.

Vmware Server is a free to download virtual machine tool that allows you to install the various type of operating systems under a virtual environment.

Before you attempt to install Windows Vista, please make sure that your computer has at least 1GB of RAM (preferably 2GB), 16GB of hard disk space and a genuine Vista CD.

Here are the steps to install Windows Vista in Ubuntu using Vmware Server.