| |  Web News: What's changed since Vista Beta 2
What's changed since Vista Beta 2  | Quote: |  | | |  | Originally Posted by winsupersite |  | | | | | | | | |
What's changed since Beta 2
Microsoft has made dramatic changes to Windows Vista since the May 2006 release of Beta 2. Many of these changes come under the hood. For example, RC1 is noticeably more stable and offers dramatically better performance than does Beta 2. Games, suddenly, work just fine. Microsoft tells me that it expects Windows Vista to run most video games as fast as does XP, and that's one performance metric I'll be measuring in the near future. Certainly, modern games like "Half-Life 2" suddenly work fine in Vista. These games were utterly unplayable in Beta 2.
Internet Explorer 7 has been augmented by a new toolbar sensing feature that will ensure that users don't install or use IE 6 browser toolbars that are incompatible with IE 7. Previously, these incompatible toolbars would install just fine, but would crash IE regularly. A new ActiveX installer service allows standard users (i.e. non-admins) to install approved (known good) ActiveX controls without admin approval.
Vista's parental controls have been upgraded to be simpler to administer. The also have new default settings, rather than simply leaving all controls off, as was the previous behavior.
User Account Control (UAC) has been substantially upgraded to be easier to use. You may recall my previous rants about UAC. Well, Microsoft has answered all of my concerns and then some. Now, UAC prompts the user far less frequently and is then much less annoying when it does throw up a prompt. Some changes include the ability to delete shortcuts from the hidden public desktop without being prompted, the ability of non-admin users to install critical updates, and a lack of prompts for common actions like opening the Scanners and Cameras and Firewall control panels. Most important, many UAC prompts no longer steals the focus. You can put off UAC approvals as long as you'd like while you work with other tasks, assuming the app you're working with isn't the one that triggered the prompt. In those cases, annoyingly, UAC is still modal.
Media Center now integrates with the meta data Tags features from Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Media Player, allowing you to sort and navigate your music, photos, and videos with Tags. (Microsoft includes various pre-built Tags in Vista. For example, Windows Photo Gallery includes Tags such as Flowers, Landscape, Ocean, and Wildlife.)
Windows Vista now fully supports both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (BR-DVD) movies. Don't misunderstand what that means, however. There is no integrated support for these movie types in Vista. Instead, Microsoft is certifying that the PC software HD-DVD and BR-DVD player vendors are including with their systems now and in the future will work fine in Vista (as they do in XP).
As mentioned previously, Windows Vista now works with many more devices out of the box (so to speak). Microsoft wouldn't provide me with an exact number, but I was told that RC1 includes "thousands more" device drivers than did Beta 2, and there are many, many more available via Windows Update, which, of course, runs automatically when you first boot into Vista. Some of the biggest driver improvements involve wireless hardware, printers, SATA controllers, and Media Center TV tuners, Microsoft says. To give you an early idea of how well this works, on the first two PCs (one desktop, one notebook) to which I installed RC1, Vista fully configured every single hardware device, except for the audio drivers, by the first boot. And the audio drivers were automatically downloaded and installed within minutes. Sweet.
As you may have heard, WinFX was wisely renamed to .NET Framework 3.0. That software is included in RC1 by default, the first time it's appeared by default in a Windows client release.
If you run the old DOS command prompt with admin privileges, the word "Administrator" appears in the application's title bar, reminding you that you could be doing something silly. It's better than nothing, I guess.
I mentioned performance. Microsoft tells me that the Windows Vista user experience is now as fast as that of Windows XP but "with more capability and consistent performance that won't degrade over time." I'll see about that. But Microsoft points to technologies such as Windows Defender (anti-spyware), which runs in a low-priority I/O mode to ensure that it impact the system's performance minimally. There are are technologies like Windows SuperFetch and Windows ReadyBoost, which reduce hard drive reads and writes. Used in combination with a security solution like Bitlocker (full drive encryption), these features provide a super-safe and performance-happy environment.
I'm sure there's more, but I'll need to spend some time with RC1 to see how it fares. In the meantime, let's examine one more major area for RC1: How Microsoft is positioning this release going forward.
Full Story at winsupersite
| |  | |  | | |
02-September-06, 02:15 PM
Linear Mode
Similar Threads 
