Windows Vista – A New Window Is Opening… Soon
By Parrish Reinoehl, Pathfinder Networks
September 2005
In late July of this year Microsoft released its first beta of the new version of Windows (beta is simply the term given to software that is still in its testing phases). For a couple years Microsoft has referred to this operating system using the code-name “Longhorn”. With the release of this beta Microsoft has officially declared the name of this new version to be “Windows Vista”.
While this operating system is still in its early phases, it is now possible to see and understand the direction Microsoft is taking. The primary changes are with the look and feel of the desktop itself. Those familiar with Windows XP will have no difficulty using Windows Vista- although things will look somewhat different. What you will likely notice most is the slightly transparent windows. In the current versions of Windows if you have multiple windows open (for example, you may have Internet Explorer, Word, and Excel all open at the same time) the top most window completely hides the contents of the window below it. In Windows Vista you will be able to just barely see that second window through the first. Don’t worry- this does not mean that the top window is completely transparent or that it will be confusing seeing through the top window. This transparency feature really only effects the Windows part of that window. For example, say you are using Microsoft Word to create a letter. The only part of that window that will show the transparency will be the Word menu area at the top of the program. Your document itself will not be transparent in any way.
The Start Menu has also undergone some changes. Currently, in Windows XP, when you click the Start button and choose the All Programs menu your list of programs will open off to the right of the All Programs button. In Windows Vista, clicking the All Programs button will open an Explorer type view of your programs directly above the All Programs button. Instead of this listing disappearing when you move your mouse outside the listing (which can be an extreme annoyance in Windows XP!) the listing in Windows Vista will stay present until you click a small Back button. The screenshot below illustrates this change. You will also notice a search function built right in to the Start menu. This search feature is extremely powerful- those of you that have installed and use the MSN Desktop Search program will know how this works. Using this feature you can search for anything on your PC- documents, pictures, music, etc. It’s very similar to how Google works for websites.
Another new and power feature is called “Virtual Folders”. This is a feature that will take some getting used to but will end up as one of those features you can’t live without. Currently in all versions of Windows you can use and create folders. A folder is simply a location on the PC’s hard drive that can be used to store pretty much anything. Windows creates many of these for you- My Documents, My Pictures, etc. These folders are where you store you Word and Excel documents, photos, music files, what have you. With the current version of Windows it can be somewhat easy to forget where you stored certain files. Say, for example, that you have created multiple folders to store your Excel spreadsheets. You may have a folder labeled Excel Files for June, and another labeled June Excel Files. You could save Excel files in either of these folders (or others) and start to lose track of where you stored which file. Virtual Folders can solve this problem for you. First, a Virtual Folder is not a folder at all. You cannot save anything to a virtual folder- you will still need to use your tried and true My Documents or whatever folder you have created. What a Virtual Folder does is allow you to “see” all of your documents in one location- regardless of where they are actually stored. Let’s go back to our example using the Excel documents. With Windows XP you would need to open each folder and go through the list of Excel files trying to find the one you need. In Windows Vista you could simply open your Virtual Folder for Excel files and it will show you every Excel file on your PC as though they were all in the same folder. Even if these Excel files were spread out in 100 different folders they would all appear in the single Virtual Folder. Wait, you might be thinking, I have thousands of Excel files and having them all appear in a single folder would be overwhelming and make it more difficult to find what I need! This is where the new, advanced Search feature comes in. You can simply use the Search feature to quickly search through all your Excel files and find exactly what you need. The search feature will not only search based on the name of the Excel file, it will also search the contents of those Excel files! You can even customize the Virtual Folder to only show, for example, Excel files created in 2004.
Windows Vista will also include a new version of Internet Explorer (finally!). This new version adds some new features- most importantly it adds the tabbed browsing feature. Tabbed browsing will be familiar to those using the FireFox browser. You can open multiple webpages and view them through a single instance of Internet Explorer. You simply click the tab at the top of the Explorer window to choose the page you want to view.
Windows Vista is a very major update to the Windows operating system. As such it will require modern and powerful hardware to run- a dedicated DirectX 9 video card, 512MB ram, a “modern” AMD or Intel CPU (such as the AMD64 processor). Microsoft has speculated that Windows Vista will be released sometime in early 2006- not that far away! To find out more about Windows Vista you can visit Microsoft’s Vista website at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx.
About the Author:
Parrish Reinoehl is President of Pathfinder Networks; a Niles based technology consulting firm specializing in providing affordable computer services to small businesses and home users including networks, PC support, sales, and service. Pathfinder Networks can be reached at 269-684-7696 or via email at parrish@pathfindernetworks.us
Pathfinder Networks website is http://www.PathfinderNetworks.us
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