Consumers have had issues with Vista since its release in January 2007 - even though more than 140 million copies of the operating system have been sold so far. Taming Vista on my Intel chip-equipped Sony Vaio laptop became, after a while, a measure of maintaining patience, never mind sanity. But then, the fact is, Vista doesn’t have to be as bad as the competing Apple ads say it is. Here are some ways to make your Vista experience more livable, and perhaps even more lovable.

Say farewell to the U A C

Among the features that many users found most annoying early on in Vista’s life cycle was the user account control feature.

The U A C was meant to save newbie Web surfers from spyware and viruses that might otherwise install themselves on the hard drive. So, a warning box pops up on the screen every time a program or application is about to be installed: ‘Windows needs your permission to continue.’

“Almost every other question I get was how to get rid of the U A C,” said Karl L Gechlik, who fields such questions on his Web site, www.asktheadmin.com.

Microsoft now allows you to turn off U A C permanently if you have a newer version of Vista, or have downloaded the Service Pack 1 release. If you haven’t downloaded Service Pack 1 yet, do it at www.tinyurl.com/55k8a4; the upgrade fixes a host of bugs with Vista.

Add memory

Vista is a memory hog. Microsoft says a computer running Vista needs 512 MB or more of random access memory. In the real world, a gigabyte of RAM is a more realistic minimum. Two GB is better.

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