22 Things You Should Know about Windows Vista

Vista is hot news that it is launching to market on 30^th January but many of us don’t know what Vista is going to bring for us more than windows XP. These are the things a consumer should know about Vista:

1- Microsoft has spent 5 years to replace Windows XP with new OS Windows Vista. It has 6 editions includes Vista Starter, Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate.

* Vista Starter: Much like Windows XP Starter Edition, this edition will be limited to emerging markets such as Colombia, India, Thailand, and Indonesia, mainly to offer a legal alternative to using unauthorized copies
* Vista Home Basic: Similar to Windows XP Home Edition, Home Basic is intended for budget users not requiring advanced media support for home use
* Vista Home Premium: is the one most consumers will want.This edition is comparable to Windows XP Media Center Edition. This edition will also support more advanced features aimed for the home market segment, such as HDTV support and DVD authoring. Extra premium games, mobile and tablet PC, network projector, touchscreen, and auxiliary display (via Windows SideShow) support, and a utility to schedule backups are available in this version.
* Vista Business: is Comparable to Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. This edition includes all the features of Home Premium with the exception of Windows Media Center and related technologies, Parental Controls, and Windows DVD and Movie Maker HD.
* Vista Enterprise: This edition is aimed at the enterprise segment of the market, and is a superset of the Business edition. Additional features include multilingual user interface support, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and UNIX application support. This edition will not be available through retail or OEM channels, but through Microsoft Software Assurance
* Vista Ultimate: This edition combines all the features of the Home Premium and Enterprise editions, a game performance tweaker (WinSAT), and "Ultimate Extras".

2- Vista is much prettier than prior versions of Windows. It has got updated graphical user interface. For example, windows, menus, radio buttons, check boxes and icons look much prettier and items in the taskbar and in folders can display little previews of what they contain.

3- Vista’s features are grouped in three themes includes Clear, Confident and Connected.

Clear: covers the significant work that's been undertaken on the Windows user interface like Aero interface, Virtual Folders and the Desktop gadgets.
Confident: contains the enhanced security features and the long-overdue backup facility.
Connected: is the umbrella term for features such as the rejuvenated networking facilities, laptop- and tablet-specific features and innovations such as Meeting Place that promise to end the tedium of photocopying handouts before meetings.

Image link: Advertising Age

4-Vista offers DirectX 10 which is “the latest version of Microsoft's graphics technology that will enable more realistic images, such as rippling water, billowing smoke and lighting effects.”

5- Updated visual style dubbed Vindows Aero. It is the new hardware-based graphical user interface in Windows Vista and supposed to be a cleaner, more powerful, more efficient and more aesthetically pleasing user interface, it also includes new transparencies, animations and eye candy- is most remarkable for its visual appeal. So, Aero puts a more beautiful face on computing.

The critics says that Vista's Aero interface and visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple’s operating system, called Mac OS X,

6- Vista has got new Windows shell which is different than Windows XP. This new shell offers a new range of organization, navigation, and search capabilities.

7-Vista has got improved searching features. Windows Vista features system-wide integrated search throughout the Explorer user interface, Start menu, Open/Save dialog boxes etc. Beyond searching for files, search works with Help, Control Panel, Networking, and more.

There is also the ability to save searches as Saved Searches where opening a folder will execute a specific search automatically and display the results as a normal folder. These virtual folders are also distributable via RSS.

8-Windows Sidebar is a new panel on the right-hand side of the screen.Users can place Desktop Gadgets, which may be used to display information such as the system time, Internet-powered features such as RSS feeds, and to control external applications such as Windows Media Player.
Also, Desktop Gadgets can also run on the Windows desktop, separate from the Sidebar.

9- Windows Vista includes the latest version of Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7 which adds different supports like tabbed browsing, Atom, RSS, internationalized domain names, a search box, a phishing filter and an anti-spoofing URL engine.

10- There is upgraded Windows Media Player 11 in Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate Editions natively supports playback of HD DVD. Specifically, Windows Vista supports the MMC-5 commands. One of the good quality of Media Player 11 is Media Sharing which allows one to share their Media library and make it accessible to other PCs running Windows Vista, Xbox 360, or networked Media Receivers. Also, it supports for other Media Center Extenders.

11- Vista has Windows Mail that is a replacement for Outlook Express. It has Phishing Filter like IE7 and a Junk mail filtering.

12- Vista has upgraded Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Calendar, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Meeting Space (replacement for NetMeeting) and Windows Media Center for Home Premium and Ultimate editions.

Also, it has got new Windows Mobility Center, a new control panel that centralizes the information related to mobile computing. Vista’s Parental controls gives you a strong hand to control how often your kid uses the PC. You can monitor where he goes and what he does. You can set hours where he can log on and where he can't log on. You can tell him to visit only certain Web sites.

Vista provides Windows SideShow, Speech recognition, new control panel of Problem Reports and Solutions, and Backup and Restore Center.

13-windows Vista security: Some of the most significant and most discussed security features included with Windows Vista include User Account Control, Kernel Patch Protection, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and address space layout randomization. In addition to features intended to improve the security of Windows, Vista includes a range of parental controls, which give owners of a computer a set of tools to limit what other accounts on a computer can do. The problem with Vista security is that the user has to run, and keep updating, security programs, which can be annoying and burdensome. Another problem is New parental controls can limit access to mature games, or allow games to be played only during certain times. For example, Every time a user downloads a game, Vista will warn that it could be harmful, and will require the administrator password if the user continues anyway.

14- In Windows Vista, 'Stand By' and 'Hibernate' have been combined into an additional 'Sleep' function which is active by default. When user chooses the 'Sleep" mode, it saves information from the computer's memory to the hibernation file on disk, but instead of turning off the computer, it simultaneously enters Standby mode. After a specified amount of time, it shuts down (hibernates). The time defult is 3 hours.

Also, Vista allows users to play a video instead of displaying a static photograph as the "wallpaper" on their everyday desktop.

15- For using Vista, high quality laptops and computers are needed. The computers are capable for vista Premium have to be powered by GHz processor, 1 GB RAM memory. Their GPUs should support DirectX 9 with Hardware Pixel Shader v2.0 and WDDM driver support.Also GPUs must have minimum 128 MB dedicated RAM supports up to 2,756,000 total pixels (e.g. 1920 × 1200). Hard Drive must be minimum 40 GB with 15 GB HDD free space. The Optical drive has to be minimum DVD-RW.

16- The license of Vista is so strict on retail buyers. First, the licensing terms for Vista only allowed buyers of retail copies of Vista to transfer their software to a new machine one time. Since then, Microsoft has responded to the complaints and has modified the EULA to read: "You may uninstall the software and install it on another device for your use. You may not do so to share this license between devices.

17- Some people believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced. But the best way of using Vista is buying a new PC with the new operating system preloaded.

18- Vista's most basic upgrade will sell for $99.95, although the home premium version will sell as an upgrade for $159. The two versions, when sold with new PCs, will go for $199 and $239, respectively, and business versions start at $199 for an upgrade and go up to $399 for the "ultimate" edition.

19- Many old software programs won't work on Vista. Even it can create some problems with some websites like uploading a video to YouTuble may become some difficult with Vista.

20-downloadable Upgrade Advisor program tells you how ready your XP machine is. It’s available at: www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upgradeadvisor.

Also, Vista blog is the appropriate place that users can get updated information about Vista. You can check this blog here.

21. Vista has come to the market after a long delay than originally anticipated.

22. The delay in Vista has decreased the income of Microsoft in 2006.