You may occasionally need to know a little more about your machine...details about your hardware, software, etc. There are four ways you can get such info in Vista.

1) For knowing just the basics, about your operating system and computer, the System Control Panel. You can open System Properties by simply pressing the Windows Logo+Break keys or by Right-clicking Computer and choose Properties.

2) For a little more information : Right-Click on Computer and select Manage to open computer management utility.

3) To dig a little deeper Systeminfo.exe is a great tool ! Systeminfo.exe is a command-line utility that displays information about your Windows version, BIOS, processor, memory, network configuration, and so on. To open this utility, simply Run Systeminfo.exe !

4) And finally there is the System Information/MSInfo Utility. msinfo32.exe is a Geek's Paradise ! To start this one, Run > type msinfo32 > hit enter.