Windows Vista comes with excellent graphical properties to give you some of the very exciting experiences when it comes to the interface. Windows Vista Aero is one of these features that are embedded with the Windows Vista system. This gives you a complete three dimensional experience apart from the fact that you need to have a system rich in resources to run the Aero Desktop.

System Requirements

You need a system rich in resources to account the high demands of the Aero Desktop. You need to have Windows Vista Premium or even better installed on your system as the Starter and Basic editions do not support aero. You need to have at least 1 GHz processor and a memory of 1 GB. You also need to have Direct X 9 compatible graphics processor with the Windows Display Driver Model installed. The minimum Video RAM needs to be around 128 MB. You need 40GB of total disc space with 15 GB free.

Turn Aero On

You can easily turn Windows Vista Aero on with a very few steps. Follow the instructions summarized below to get it done for you.

The first step perhaps is to go to the Personalize desktop option in your computer. You can simply access these from your desktop. Right click on the desktop and select Personalize at the end of the list. Move ahead to the theme tab. You will have a window that is going to have a number of lists with drop-down menus. The default setting will be set to Vista Basic in almost all the systems. From the same Drop down menu, you need to set the option of Windows Aero active. Apply the theme by pressing Apply and move on the press OK and come out of the simple wizard turning the Windows Aero on.

Features of Windows Aero

The best of the aero features is the Windows Flip 3D feature. This works the same as ALT + TAB but you get an exciting look with this. You can easily flip from one window to another in the three dimensional formation. This can be activated using the Windows key and the Tab key at the same time. Once the Aero Flip is activated, you can release TAB key and still press the Windows key to retain. You can use your mouse wheel to scroll from one active window to another as well as you can move the aero keys on your keyboard to move from one window to another. You can move on to the window of your choice by just clicking on the window.

The Windows Vista Aero brings Windows Vista glass feature. You can activate this feature in the Enable Transparency in the Windows Color and Appearance location within the Personalization windows of your desktop. All your windows and the bars are going to seem transparent and see through giving an impression of your wallpaper.

You can have a look at the live thumbnails of the application and programs you are running by just pointing your cursor on their tabs.

All the exciting looks that are ensured by Windows Vista Aero consume a lot of your resources. You need to have a powerful system to ensure that the process goes on thoroughly or else you will feel your system to be quite slow.