In Vista, click on the start button, then Control Panel; switch to Classic View, and double click on Folder Options, then the View tab. You can also get to these options from Explorer, but I don't recall how I did that recently, configuring a new laptop for someone else (it is easier once you show the main menu bar in Explorer, but I don't recall how I did that either).
One problem showing hidden and system files is that will display a couple of configuration files on the desktop. I'm not sure if you can hide just those files, or disable stuff so Windows doesn't use desktop configuration files.
If you right click on the desktop there are icon size options under the View menu. I'm not sure how to get them smaller if they are already set to 'classic icons', though (aside from increasing the screen resolution, which would affect everything).
You should be able to open a file with a particular application without setting a file association (have not tried that in Vista, though). However, the game will not have a problem with the file association.
If you add a shortcut to a text editor to your desktop, you should be able to drag and drop files on it to open them. An entry in the right click Send To menu is also handy, but Vista does not appear to have a Send To folder that you can just add your own shortcuts to (it may have been moved to the registry, or something). Somebody should have created a program to add this option by now, or a description of how to do it manually.
The 'startup logo 0' line will eliminate the need for the play CD most of the time. For the blessing ceremony, the game will not crash if you do not have the CD in a drive, but it will not ask for the disk either. I'm pretty sure it reacts the same as the no-CD hack, and your character ends up stuck just outside the council hall with part of the game waiting for the cutscene to finish, and part not playing the cutscene because it can not find the files on the play CD.
I think in that case you would have to reload your last save and hit the gong again to trigger the blessing ceremony. This causes a one way trip to the final area of the game, so you would most likely want to save before hitting the gong, anyway.
I don't know exactly what the quickstart option does. The Alpha bit option is used to fix a few graphics problems (mentioned in the readme.txt file) if certain techniques were not supported by the video card. I have seen the color mode option in my config.div file, but I am pretty sure it was listed as 'rgb 555'; I'm not sure what option triggers this entry.
