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FEATURE
Vista: Out of the box
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Windows Movie Maker/DVD Maker
Available in: Vista Home, Vista Home Premium, Vista Ultimate (TBC)
Despite jumping four versions since the latest release for Windows XP, Windows Movie Maker 6 isn’t actually a huge upgrade in itself: aside from minor cosmetic changes, there’s a small increase in the number of effects, plus a handful of new transitions. It now also supports the recorded TV (DVR-MS) files that Windows Media Center Edition produces, so you’ll be able to trim down recordings, remove adverts or downscale their resolution.
If you’re running Home Premium or Ultimate Editions, there’s also support for importing, editing and burning Windows Media HD format, although you’ll need a fairly powerful PC to handle it. The embedded video preview window will also take advantage of any graphics hardware you have, so is no longer necessarily restricted to 320 x 240 pixels.
As well as popping up when you author DVDs from within Movie Maker, DVD Maker is a standalone application in itself. It’s basic, but could prove handy as a quick and dirty way of producing photo and video slideshows, complete with soundtracks and automatically produced DVD menus.
Windows Mail, Calendar and Contacts
Available in: All versions (TBC)
We’ve had Outlook Express since Windows 95, but Vista’s built-in email client comes with a brand new name: Windows Mail. It’s an almost identical program, with a few added extras bringing it up to date. Most significantly, there’s now a configurable junk mail folder, which also provides a degree of phishing protection, and Vista’s instant search engine to make finding previous correspondence substantially faster. Support for Internet newsgroups remains, with the addition of “community ratings”, allowing users to vote on the usefulness of posts.
Windows Contacts, rather than being a standard application, curiously presents each contact as a file in a Contacts folder sat in a user’s home directory. It’s a big step forward from the previous Windows Address Book though; more accessible and supporting more fields. You can also import and export contacts using vCards or Comma Separated Value (CSV) files.
Most significant of all, though, is the Calendar application, entirely new to Windows Vista. Supporting the popular vCal and iCal formats, much of the interface is a simplified version of Office Outlook, but you can still set up complex appointments or recurring events, and generally all from one screen. You can have multiple calendars, publish them online or subscribe to other people’s. Aside from the lack of Exchange integration, there’s surprisingly little missing, and these three applications should cater for most people’s day-to-day needs.
Internet Explorer 7
Available in: All versions
Microsoft’s much-maligned Web browser still retains the lion’s share of the market, yet it’s remained largely unchanged since the release of Windows XP. On the surface, Internet Explorer 7 brings in a number of usability changes, removing much of the toolbar clutter of previous versions and adding tabbed browsing — albeit some years after the competition.
Like much of Vista, the menu bar is hidden by default, with common tasks accessed via drop-down icons and arrows. The history and favourites features have been combined into a drop-down “Favorites center” on the left, which also incorporates quick access to the new support for RSS — navigate to a page with an RSS feed, and an icon in the toolbar will turn orange to indicate it. A search box is once again present at the top right, which you can customise to a search engine of your choice.
Security has also been a prime concern and, in Vista, IE7 runs what Microsoft calls Protected Mode. This effectively sandboxes the application, denying it access to any of your machine’s local resources without explicit user permission — a feature that won’t be available in the XP version. There’s also a phishing filter which checks against a regularly updated blacklist of known fraudulent sites, and all windows (including pop-ups) have their own address bars, so you’ll always know where they come from.
Warning: Please note that the software bundled with each version of Vista is subject to change.
Copyright © 2009 Dennis Publishing
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Microsoft is offering substantial discount deals on Windows 7 Home Premium packs for families (up to 3 licences) for under $250.
Believe it or not, but Microsoft weren't always so web friendly. In fact, it was Bill Gates who initially panned the internet and Microsoft's future in it. So what turned it all around?
Packed with features, only its value for money lets it escape without an award this month