Wiley The Unofficial Guide to Windows XP 978-0-471-76320-8 Benutzerhandbuch

Chapter 3

59

Configuring the basic desktop 

■

Making the Start menu and

taskbar work for you 

■

Enhancing Windows with PowerToys 

■

Managing applications 

■

Improving performance

ou don’t get a second chance to make a good first
impression.” This saying has never been truer
than with an operating system. People make snap

judgments about an OS based on how it looks — are the col-
ors crisp and clean, with enough variation to be pleasing to
the eye? Does it look comfortable to work with? And is it flexi-
ble, so that it can be changed if boredom sets in?

Out of the box, Windows XP is the most flexible and col-

orful version that Microsoft has released to date. It has mixed
together a new design, an upgrade to some old components,
and some much-needed tweaking to give the Windows desk-
top a fresh new look. It’s an improvement over the Windows
9x and Me series, and not as industrial as the Windows NT or
Windows 2000 flavors.

The graphical parts of the XP desktop include the overall

screen resolution (which determines how much information
you can pack onto a monitor’s real estate), icons, desktop
wallpaper, graphical schemes (a collection of settings that
determines how windows, menu text, and other items
appear), and themes or global changes that create order
out of configuration chaos — hopefully in a pleasant and use-
ful way.

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