I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a HAL 9000 theme already, considering how popular the Space Odyssey movie was. This Vista theme is really sleek and perfect for any computer. I like how that red eye is looking at you. It makes you feel like HAL 9000 is actually in your computer. This is a great looking theme with all the different shades of gray and the bright red light in the middle.
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Windows Vista Springboard is a micro site on the Microsoft Web site dedicated to helping IT Pros get Vista deployed into their environments.

Now before going any further with regards to Vista Springboard, I want to say that I am a strong supporter of Windows Vista. Their are some big benefits, and some big steps forward with Vista. The most important aspect of Vista is that it helps me be a lazy admin.

Now I'll also be honest and realistic, there are a lot of people that don't like Vista. There are many reasons why people won't like Vista, some of the reasons are legitimate, however most reasons tend to be rooted in a haze of bad perception. What I mean by that is Vista has a perception of lacking value, or in other words people will ask "What is my compelling reason for upgrading to Vista?" This goes for Home users, Office users,  IT pros, and especially IT managers and decision makers.

This is where the Vista Springboard program comes into play. IT people are busy people, and even though we would all like to be Lazy Admins, in reality my guess is that

During the betas, one of the few new functionality Windows Vista Service Pack 1 added was the ability to create a Windows recovery CD with an easy-to-use GUI interface. Up and until then, it was slightly harder but still possible to do so through a command line. Update: To avoid confusion, this is not the type of recovery discs you find in prepackaged computer systems. This recovery disc does not reinstall Windows, it merely offers tools to fix it if it ever becomes unbootable.

Whilst all Vista install DVDs include the recovery functionality natively, it’s probably useful to burn yourself a spare copy to take with you. You can also download an ISO from NeoSmart.net but you might not have bandwidth to spare.

For unknown reasons, the functionality was then pulled out of the final release of SP1. If you look inside your system files, you can still find recdisc.exe which is the utility’s executable, but clicking on it does not launch anything. The shortcut in the Start Menu was also removed, indicating it was removed on purpose.

Out of curiosity, I decided to find out if by copying a version of recdisc.exe from a beta