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Windows Vista features - 1

Windows Vista is a bit of a mixture of cool new features, and a disappointing lack of some other goodies at the moment. Of course, the feature set is not final yet, but a picture of the basics is emerging.

Some much anticipated features, like the new file system WinFS, have been dropped from this version, but there is enough to keep a geek happy for quite a long while. Here’s a couple that I have found ‘good value’
To the average user, a lot has appeared not to have changed, but you don’t have to dig very far – even in the beta 1 I’m typing this on – to see lots of changes under the surface.

Virtual Folders

One of the best improvements in the UI is virtual folders. At first glance they may seem like glorfied ‘shortcuts’, but they promise to make keeping track of your data much easier. In short, virtual folders are really just saved search queries, but in practice, they enable you to keep track of files and information totally independantly of the file system.
When you fire up Windows Explorer, instead of the traditional file system-focussed view, you now have an information-focussed view, with standard vitual folders displaying files based on author, keywords, recent or types. You can create as many simple or complex queries as you wish and sort and display your data based on those.
Hard to explain, but the more I use it, the more this alone would make VF’s a killer component of Vista.
Here’s a good article from Paul Thurott’s site going into more detail, with screenshots: virtual folders

Vista Disk Imaging

On a much more geeky front, Vista will ship with built in disk imaging. It will be a file-based imaging system, rather than the more common sector-based imaging currently around.
But for someone who does his fair share of installing Windows on new systems, this little snippet from the Technet page on the feature really brightens my day: “This WIM image format is hardware-agnostic, meaning that you need only one image to address many different hardware configurations.”
Being able to build hardware-independant installation images of Windows is a great step forward.

Another snippet from Technet:

“I bet you’re wondering what the disk-image deployment process looks like. Installing Windows Vista, whether doing an in-place upgrade or a complete wipe-and-load, is a new, completely image-based process. In fact, Windows Vista ships exclusively in the WIM image format.
In fact, the in-place upgrade process works better than it did in Windows XP. The reason is that upgrading to Windows Vista is really a clean installation with the migration of user settings, documents, and applications from an older version of Windows. The in-place upgrade process is better named ‘wipe-and-reload’.
The following steps describe how you use these tools to deploy a Windows Vista disk image:

1. You can enhance a Windows Vista image by using the desktop-engineering tools that Microsoft provides for selection of device drivers and optional components such as languages.
2. You install the image on a test computer, add applications (e.g., Microsoft Office or a Line of Business Application), and then save the image to the network.
3. You deploy the image to the user by using tools that Microsoft provides. You can completely automate the installation by using the new scripting and answer file capabilities that Windows Vista provides. If you are upgrading a computer from an earlier version of Windows to Windows Vista, then the setup program will migrate users’ documents, settings, and applications without prompting the user for input.

Can’t wait for all that!

Beefier graphics systems required

If you are in the market for a new PC now or in the near future, and you think you will want to install Vista on it, take note of this snippet on Bink

More to come…