Where Vista falls short of XP
Posted by Jon Lee in Personal, tags: dual-monitor, multimon, nhc, software, ultramon, undervolting, vista
So far, Windows Vista has been very nice. I’m loving a lot of the new features, including the new explorer layout and the start menu – really saves a lot of space and clicks! I also like some of the smaller niftier features like individual application volume control.
However, there are two pieces of software that I had in XP but does not work in Vista nor have I been able to find a suitable alternative with the same functionality.
The first is Notebook Hardware Control. This wonderful laptop-focused program not only displayed the CPU temperature and displayed battery status (as well as battery wear level) but most importantly, it allowed users to control the throttling of their CPU as well as control the voltage used by the CPU. The combination of these two features allows the computer to run at full speed as it normally would but at a much lower temperature. The program has not been made compatible with Vista yet and my lap is paying the price in heat rashes 
The second piece of software that Vista is lacking is a taskbar manager for multiple monitors. In XP, when using multiple monitors, there are programs that allowed your taskbar to extend onto a secondary (or even tertiary) monitor. Programs on each screen will appear only in the corresponding taskbar. Two popular programs I have tried are Oscar’s MultiMon Taskbar (freeware) and Ultramon ($40 – free 30 day trial). In my opinion, Ultramon was prettier but both programs work equally well. Oscar’s Multimon even has a clipboard tool that kept track of clipboard history! I’m not sure why, but I was somehow under the impression that Vista would implement native multiple monitor taskbar support as it seems like a fairly intuitive thing to include. Guess not 
If anyone knows of any software that can accomplish either of these tasks in Vista, please leave a comment and you will get a big thank you (and a linkback of course 
).
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