Speeding up Aero on Windows 7 and Vista

Running Windows 7 Beta on a Netbook has made me look a bit at how to make Aero a bit faster and whether it was worth having it on at all. Second question first - your PC should be faster with Aero ON. Vista especially on my Netbook was painfully slow without Aero - the reason being the main CPU and memory are doing a lot more graphics work with Aero off - turning it on shifts a whole heap of work to the Graphics processor and memory.

That doesn't mean we need every bell and whistle though, and I've found its best to remove some of Aero's effects.

To get to this page, right click Computer, click Properties, Advanced System Settings and the top Settings button, under performance. Select "adjust for best performance", then put a couple of things back on. I would suggest ticking the boxes in this picture (taken from Windows 7 Beta) - "Enable Desktop Composition" and "Use visual styles on windows and buttons" are essential as disabling these would turn off Aero. The rest are personal preference, the ones I have on here make little difference to the speed of Windows but make things more readable and useful.