Your Future Windows - 2

What else does Windows Vista offer? The story continues…

One day Bill Gates lands up in front of StPeter@heaven.com. St. Peter says, “What do I do with you? You've created many jobs and helped millions in the electronic age. But you've also been a royal pain to other companies. So I'll let you have a look at heaven and hell and choose for yourself.”

St. Peter shows Bill heaven with its fluffy clouds and dainty angels with harps. Bill pouts, "That’s ok. Nothing great." So St. Peter gives Bill a glimpse of hell: Scantily clad beauties, swaying palms and the works... Bill gleefully jumps at it.

Two weeks later St. Peter pops into hell to see how Bill is doing. He finds Bill chained to a flaming wall, yelping in agony. "Where are the babes? Where's the beach?" screams Bill. "This isn't what you showed me…"

"Oh that", says St. Peter, "was just a demo version. And you ought to know what demos are all about."

Okay, it’s never really as bad as that in real life. But you get the hang of what I saying about demos, don’t you? Luckily Windows Vista is nearly past the demo stage. So let’s continue with our story on the remaining prime ingredients of this impending OS upgrade.

Networking
Windows Vista has reworked its networking stacks. IPv6 will now be supported by all the OSes networking components, services, and the user interface. For those who are wondering about IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), it is an evolutionary set of improvements to the current IP Version 4. And it provides for IP support in several devices, including the OSes. It is also called IPng (IP Next Generation).

Making use of peer-to-peer technology, Vista introduces a new domain-like networking setup called Castle. Castles help simplify home networks without inflicting the pain of maintaining a central server. In addition, network problem diagnosis will also be much easier with Vista.

Windows Defender
The friendly neighborhood Spiderman! Positive developments in security aside, Vista includes an anti-spyware utility. Called Windows Defender, it scans the system for spyware and deploys Real Time Security agents to monitor “common areas of Windows” for modification by slimely spyware. It also lets you remove ActiveX applications and delete the file histories in several programs.

Mt. Rainier Support
Apart from in-built DVD recording capabilities, Vista also comes with Mt. Rainier support. (To put it crudely, Mt. Rainier technology makes the use CD-RW discs as easy as the use of floppies.)

Aur, Autha, Ityadi Etc.
* xImage, a file-based disk imaging technology that will install Vista in about 15 minutes, instead of the 40 minutes that the current file-by-file copying method takes.

* There is native, embedded RSS support.

* Windows Mail replaces Outlook Express.

* "My" prefixes have been killed. "My Documents" is "Documents", "My Computer" is "Computer", etc. And "Documents and Settings" folder is now just "Users".

* There is native raw image support for a variety of formats used by digital cameras.

* Improved File Encryption has beefed up privacy and security.

* And there is Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat), a benchmarking tool to analyse subsystems (graphics, memory, etc) for software optimizations, and comparison with other Vista systems.

Still hungry kya? Well there’s lots more maal-masala in the pot. So go do some web trawling now:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getthebeta/default.aspx

As for downloading Vista, beware, yeh Beta OS hai beta. It’s still about a year away from a production release. Panga nahin lenay ka… Please back up all your existing data etc. and pray hard before venturing forth. And don't send any supari assassins after me if your PC melts down!