If your video hardware supports the highest Vista video mode, called Aero, there are three Vista features that will help you work with multiple open windows -- something many power users complain about. Live Taskbar thumbnails provide a pop-up thumbnail window from task buttons on the taskbar. The "live" part describes the feature's ability to show moving video, which works when the video window is open (presumably behind other windows), not when it is minimized. Given that sound continues on video even when the video window is minimized, this is a bug Microsoft should fix. Still, Live Taskbar thumbnailing is a useful feature that is a whole lot better than clicking every taskbar button, opening all your windows (again?) when you're trying to find a specific one.

Vista's new Live Taskbar thumbnails pop-up from taskbar buttons, showing you a thumbnail of what the open windows looks like -- without opening program button. This makes it much easier to find a specific window.

Another way Microsoft offers to solve this too-many-open-windows problem is by merging Live Taskbar with the Alt-Tab task switcher tool, which is part of the muscle memory of many experienced Windows users. By pressing Alt-Tab in Vista, you can see the same Live Taskbar thumbnails in the task switcher, which you can quickly navigate to open the window of your choice. This is a strong improvement to the task switcher, which previously only displayed program icons. Microsoft has named this feature "Flip."

The third feature, Flip 3D, is pretty cool, but in Vista Beta 2, it's also somewhat disappointing. It works exactly like Flip. The only difference is that instead of using the Alt-Tab key combination, you use the Windows key with the Tab key. And the result is a three-dimensional view of your open program windows (not thumbnails). They're rendered in a three-dimensional view, lined up in single file but twisted on a vertical axis and inclined so you can see both the full front of the foremost program windows and parts of the program windows behind it.