Microsoft has said that it doesn't think a utility designed to pare down Windows Vista to improve performance is a good idea. vLite can be used to remove Windows components to reduce the load on the computer.

A representative told new.com that it might affect the ability of Vista to download updates or cause instability.

It's not a new idea to play around with the Windows GUI. We looked at one utility a few years back that replaced the Windows 98 GUI with that of Windows 95. The trouble is testing to see whether it has made any difference. Most benchmarks will be relatively unaffected by the changes, well at least in terms of loading slightly larger icons on the desktop for example. Whether or not background scanning or defragging makes a difference is likely to depend on how polite these tasks are.