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"Windows Vista Review"
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Microsoft
Windows Vista
Top
10
Reasons to use :
1.
UI built for the era of video and digital photography
It's not
actually
Microsoft's key selling point, but the thing that everyone will
probably find the most useful about Windows Vista is that photos,
videos and
music are not treated the same as Word documents any more. When you
open a folder of photos, they come up as they'd appear in Google Picasa
or Apple iPhoto. There's inbuilt basic photo editing. Music folders
come up in columns of ID3 tags, a bit like iTunes. Finally, you don't
have to rely so much on third party apps to work with your files.
2.
Image-based
install
PC
enthusiasts spend a lot
of time installing and reinstalling Windows for their own and other
people's PCs.DVD is actually a pre-installed version
of the
OS in a compressed form, making it substantially quicker to install.
It's also much easier to customise for unprompted installation with the
correct defaults, and you can even install your own software
automatically at the time Vista is installed - like slipstreaming
service packs but on steroids.
3. Up-to-date
driver base and better driver handling on installation
Enjoy the
just-baked
driverbase while it lasts (19,500 drivers large). If you do need to use
a special disk driver during installation in the future it won't have
to be on floppy disk. Now you can use a USB memory key or CD. Also,
Microsoft is now making much greater use of Windows Update for
provision of drivers that aren't present in the Windows RTM driver
base. Windows Chief Jim Allchin talks about it here.
4. Desktop
search and search folders built in
Yes, you
could already get
umpteen desktop search apps including Windows Desktop Search from
Microsoft for XP, but you can't underestimate the importance of it
being installed on every single Windows Vista PC. Now when your mum
rings
saying she's lost a document she's been working on all day you can just
direct her to the start menu. Also, desktop search folders are handy
for finding stuff you haven't necessarily got stored in one folder but
that is useful to gather together from time to time (e.g. documents
with "tax, invoice or receipt" in them).
5. Sleep mode
that actually works.
It's a small
thing, but
makes a big difference: Windows Vista has finally caught up to
operating
systems that can sleep near instantly and wake up reliably, in a couple
of seconds. Read more...
6. Rock-solid
laptop encryption
The data on
your laptop is
worth a hell of a lot to an identity thief.Windows Vista's "Bitlocker"
encryption (only in Enterprise and Ultimate versions) does heavy-duty,
full-drive encryption, so you can be certain that unless a thief has
your password there's simply no way they're going to get in. Read
more...
7. Better
file navigation
Windows Vista now has
some
time-saving features like favourite folders displayed in the left
column of every Explorer window, as well as "breadcrumbed" folder lists
allowing you to quickly jump backward and forward through a path. Sure,
these should have been put into Windows years ago, but at least they're
here now.
8. Inbuilt
undelete
Or, depending
on how you
look at it, inbuilt rolling backup. Every time you make a change to a
file or delete it, Windows keeps the previous version. As a result, the
"oh !@#$ I just overwrote my entire PhD with Document1" feeling can be
quickly assuaged. Read more...
9. DirectX10
OK, this
isn't so much a
benefit as your hand being forced: DirectX 10 will never be made for
XP, and a raft of games have already been announced
‘exclusively'
for 10. Admittedly it does take gaming graphics to the next level, but
it's very much tied to Windows Vista.
10. Face it,
you have no choice
When
Microsoft brings out
a major renovation to Windows, you can choose to ignore it for a year
or two, but then the device drivers start drying up for older versions
of Windows, your friends start asking questions about their new PC that
you can't answer, and even if you use Linux, you'll inevitably need
familiarity with Microsoft's latest interoperability blockers.Source apc.
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