Clicking Your Windows Vista Start Button
In This Chapter:
- Master Vista's Start menu
- Modify your Start menu's look and behavior
- Locate and run programs
- Search from your Start menu
- Pin programs to your Start menu
It's time to jump into Windows Vista! The quicker you learn the ins and outs of Vista's interface the quicker and easier you'll get your work done and have time to enjoy some Media Player music, movies, or perhaps a game.
Just about everything begins with a single click of your mouse—a click on your Vista's Start button. (You can also display Vista's Start menu by pressing your Windows key.) With that one click, you gain access to all your programs, computer settings, and Vista interface. Even some Windows veterans are somewhat taken aback when they first deal with Vista's Start menu. Here is where you first start to see that as much as the UI looks similar to XP, Vista is actually quite different once you start actually using it. Just remember, these differences only serve to help you get more done with less effort.
About Vista's Start Menu
Clicking your Start button produces Vista's Start menu, shown in Figure 3.1. Your Start menu will surely look somewhat different from the one in Figure 3.1 because the programs installed on your computer will differ. In addition, the Start menu changes, depending on what you've recently done, in an attempt to adapt to your behavior.
Figure 3.1 Vista's Start button produces your Start menu from which you can launch your programs and perform just about any necessary task.
As Chapter 1, "Welcome to Windows Vista," explained, Vista's Start menu doesn't cascade all over your desktop the way Windows XP's did. This leaves you with more desktop space so that you can better see what you were doing and where you're headed. One, two, or three clicks are usually all you need to start programs and adjust settings on your computer from the Start menu.