Vista Good News: Alt+Tab Major Improvement!

Vista isn't all bad news. Besides that fact that it looks pretty (shiny!), both Alt+Tab and and the new Windows+Tab functionality make life a lot easier than in Windows XP. I tend to run with tons of apps open concurrently, and my old habit was to use Alt+Tab to cycle through the apps until I found the one I want. Now, although it isn't terribly discoverable, you can press Alt+Tab (or Windows+Tab to get the fancy layered window layout), and select the item you want with your mouse! No need to tab through all the open apps. This saves me a ton of time, and I just tried it on a whim. And it worked! See, there are some nice new features in there.

If only I could get a VPN to work. If anyone knows the trick to making outbound VPN connections from Vista, I'd sure like to know what it is. Thanks!

Published Thursday, January 25, 2007 1:54 PM by KenG

Comments

Thursday, January 25, 2007 5:10 PM by Russ Nemhauser

# re: Vista Good News: Alt+Tab Major Improvement!

This improvement is actually a copy from OS X. What I'd be really interested in (and perhaps I'll blog about this) is a list (doesn't have to be complete) of true improvements (not just changes) that do NOT come from Mac OS X or that OS X does not offer. That would certainly be interesting.
Saturday, February 10, 2007 6:33 AM by Aakash

# re: Vista Good News: Alt+Tab Major Improvement!

Yes, I guess that Microsoft have really done a good job updating its earlier functionality of Alt+Tab. It was not providing any good control over the opened windows and switching between them. All you have to do is hit and trial blindly. You never know where and on which window you will land up at last.
Sunday, February 11, 2007 4:09 PM by KenG

# re: Vista Good News: Alt+Tab Major Improvement!

FWIW, VPN is now working. I had to turn on access in the built-in firewall. Darn, I hate the fact that we have to deal with all this securty security. Why can't the world be a NICE place?!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007 5:52 AM by Mi Sha

# re: Vista Good News: Alt+Tab Major Improvement!

Hm... what happened to the good old Microsoft's own Alt-Tab power tool add-on? I use it since... hm... 2003 (or so) and it works pretty much faster than Vista's solution.