What's
Inside a Computer
Next
Month
This
years Digital Photographic competition will be held as usual during
the December meeting. So just to remind you of the subject categories
for this year.
1. Sunrise or Sunset
2. Portrait in monochrome
3. Nature
4. Image Manipulation (use of any program effects to enhance the
photo)
5. People at Work
6. Pub sign or Business Sign
Last
Month….
It is a little over 9 months since Microsoft hit the world with
its new WOW factor operating system – Windows Vista. Since
then Vista has seen some mixed fortunes with Microsoft claiming
a massive uptake and computer manufacturers like Dell seeing sales
drop off and are now offering new computers with the option of
Windows XP instead of Vista. Also it has been noted that many
large companies have no intention of upgrading their equipment.
One of the major issues that many users will come across is when
you try to connect some of your older very serviceable peripherals
such as printers or scanners only to find that the software drivers
will not work with Vista. Microsoft is not interested in writing
driver software for 3rd party equipment and the manufacturers
have long moved on to newer models. Not a very good start for
the new operating system
An
early issue I personally found was that Vista did not work with
USB modems. This does not particularly bode well if you have just
bought a new machine with Vista installed and find that you cannot
access the internet for all the things you have to do to get your
new machine up and running properly. Whether this anomaly has
been fixed, I am not sure, but it seems to me just another case
of “Your equipment is obsolete in our eyes, so change it!!!”
Anyway,
after all that, Derek has got a copy installed on his laptop and
last month he showed us what some of the hype around Vista is
all about. So Vista is the newest offering from the Microsoft
stable and is set to replace the popular XP which after numerous
teething issues has become a firm favourite with the computing
community because of its robustness and security features.
Derek
explained that there are currently 4 versions of Vista available
– Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business and
Vista Ultimate. These came with a variety of features which are
available depending on the version purchased. He showed us a chart
depicting what was on each. Home Basic, the cheapest had few of
the features that are used to demonstrate the Wow factor and looked
a little lightweight. Derek’s version was Home Premium which
he equated with XP home media. It has a good range of features
including many of the fancy options everyone sees on the adverts.
The
first thing one notices is the redesigned user interface named
Windows Aero (Authentic, Energetic, Reflective & Open) –
got to be American! Aero is intended to be cleaner and more aesthetically
neater than previous Windows versions, including glass-like transparencies,
window animations and eye candy. It features a new default font
– Segeo UI with a slightly larger size, a streamlined style
for wizards and a change in tone and phrasing in most of the dialog
and control panels. For the lower end version unable to use Aero,
there is a “Windows Vista Basic” theme that does not
use the Aero’s desktop composition. This apparently looks
similar to the screens on to the XP and 2000 systems. Icons in
Vista are now visually more realistic and are scalable in size
up to 256 x 256 (512Kb) for optimization on high DPI displays.
Running
down the left hand side of the screen is the Windows Sidebar which
contains the desktop gadgets. Small applets designed for special
purposes can be added to the bar. Applets include weather forecasts,
sports scores and financial information.
Available
gadgets are numerous and include a calculator, clock, CPU meter,
currency converter, feed viewer, slide show and much more. If
you do not have enough, Microsoft publishes additional gadgets
on their website.
Perhaps
the one item everyone saw on the initial sales pitch was the 3D
screen display. This is only available on premium versions of
the software and is activated by the ALT + Tab keys. Hence, in
this mode stacked windows can be seen as a cascaded stack which
can be rotated in 3D to provide views of all of them simultaneously.
Many
of the standard windows applications have had an overhaul and
there are also some new ones as well :-
Windows Mail replaces Outlook Express and contains a Phishing
filter and uses Bayersian junk mail filtering, which is updated
monthly via Windows updates. Email messages are now stored as
individual files rather than in a binary database to reduce corruption
and enable message searches in real time.
Windows Contacts replaces the original address book and is now
more of a personal information management system which can be
integrated into other applications. It can store custom information
relating to contacts, including display pictures.
Windows Calendar is a new calendar application that supports the
iCalendar format.
Windows Fax & Scan is an integrated fax and scanning application
that replaces the Fax Services of previous Windows versions.
Windows Meeting Spaces replaces NetMeeting and is a peer to peer
collaboration application. Users can share applications with other
users on a local network or over the internet.
Paint has had a makeover and now includes a cropping function
and the undo limits have been increased from 3 to 10.
Sound Recorder has been rewritten and can now support recording
clips of any length and save them in .WMA format.
Windows Photo Gallery is a photo and video library management
application which can import from digital cameras. It offers basic
image editing facilities, a slideshow with custom effects that
can be created and burnt to DVD. It also supports .RAW images.
Widows Movie Maker supports editing and outputting high definition
video which can be burnt to DVD using Windows DVD Maker
Other applications include the Snipping Tool for capturing screen
shots and a myriad of Games either new or updated to take advantage
of Vista’s expanded graphics capabilities. Sadly Pinball
has been dropped.
Internet
Explorer 7 comes as standard on Vista but can be downloaded from
Microsoft for use on XP machines. This has a host of upgrades
and new features available to the user including the ability to
Quick Tab screens, so that now you can have numerous web pages
available at the click of the mouse button. There is also a Phishing
filter and an anti spoofing URL engine. On Vista, Internet Explorer
operates in a special Protected Mode, which runs the browser in
a security sandbox that has no access to the rest of the operating
or files systems except the temp internet folder. This is to prevent
hackers subversively installing unwanted software such as spyware
on to the computer.
Windows
Media Player is now up to version 11 with numerous new and upgraded
functions. It is also available for download on to XP machines.
It has a revamped front end and now supports HD DVD playback.
In fact the Media Centre available in the Home Premium and Ultimate
editions has had a significant upgrade. A new user interface guides
the user through main and sub menus simply and effectively. It
offers a host of new or improved features including support for
two duel tuner television cards, native DVD/MPEG-2 support, additional
Movies & DVD button that lists all the movies on the hard
drive or DVD and supports high definition content and CableCard.
So
after all the new frills, bells and whistles what about security?
Microsoft has put a lot of work into the security of Vista and
some of the most significant features include User Account Control,
Kernal Patch Protection and BitLocker Drive Encryption. Vista
includes a range of parental control tools which can limit what
other account users can do. The Firewall has been improved and
now supports both inbound and outbound packet filtering, IPv6
connection filtering and more detailed configurable rules and
policies.
The
Power Management System offers a Sleep power state which replaces
the old standby mode and is active by default. In the sleep mode
information is saved from computer memory into a hibernation file
on disk. In this mode the computer instead of turning off moves
into a standby state and after a user specified time shuts down
and hibernates. If power is lost during the standby phase, the
computer will reboot to the existing hibernate image on disk.
Sleep mode offers the benefits of fast suspend and resume when
in the standby phase and a relatively faster restart and reliability
returning from the hibernation state instead of the customary
reboot in case of power loss. There is also an improved battery
icon in the notification area which allows the user to select
various Power Plan presentation settings.
Plans for a Vista service pack are in the offing but it is not
expected to be earth shattering with most of the enhancements
being for Vista Ultimate customers rather than home users. There
will be some reliability, performance and security tweaks for
all versions but nothing to get too exited about.
The
question is “Do I upgrade or wait?” There has been
a reprieve on the life of XP into next year and manufacturers
are continuing to offer XP as an alternative. Levono
are for a limited time offering a Windows XP recovery CD for any
of its customers who need to move back to XP from Vista Business
or Ultimate. Clearly an embarrassment to the gurus at Microsoft.
In the mean time my copy of Vista Home premium is staying firmly
in its wrapper.
Our
thanks to Derek for an interesting insight into Microsoft’s
latest operating system. I am sure we will see and hear much more
about Vista in the coming months.
Dave
Robb
|
