46155book.
46155book.
46155book.book Page 3 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM Chapter 1 Introducing Windows Vista Since the advent of the personal computer, users have wanted three things in an operating system: power, stability, and usability. Windows Vista has all these and more in abundance. It features an indefatigable 32-bit architecture, complete with built-in networking and the capability to run almost every piece of Windows software on the market, as well as a new interface.
6155book.book Page 4 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA Enterprise Microsoft has targeted this edition at large businesses with a global presence. This edition contains many features that the business with a global presence won’t need, such as additional layers of security designed to prevent access from external sources.
46155book.book Page 5 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA? went to Linux and mostly stayed there.) NT, which stood for New Technology for a while until Microsoft decided that it didn’t stand for anything anymore when NT 4.0 arrived, had a completely different underpinning of code than Windows 9x. NT was designed for stability, and as a result, it crashed much less frequently than Windows 9x.
46155book.book Page 6 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA improve user productivity in much the same way that other environmental considerations do. Productivity is one of the reasons why companies have plants in the office area (even areas that a client won’t visit) or paint offices in bright colors, rather than maintain a factory atmosphere.
46155book.book Page 7 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA? Figure 1.2 The non-glass UI looks a lot like Windows XP, but does include a few Vista features. Many Administrative Tasks Have Moved You’ll still find the familiar Administrative Tools folder in the Control Panel and the applets it contains still do all of the tasks it did before. The interface for the applets differs. In some cases, it differs a lot.
46155book.book Page 8 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard (see http://www.w3.org/RDF/) for describing information on the Internet using Extensible Markup Language (XML). Developers use it for a wide range of tasks, everything from news syndication to photo collections. RSS (see http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/rss.
46155book.book Page 9 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA? People Near Me provides an extremely easy method of creating a collaboration environment with other people on your local network. All you do is perform a simple setup and then either invite other people to join you or join other collaborations as you receive invitations. One of the principal collaboration tools associated with People Near Me is Windows Meeting Space.
46155book.book Page 10 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA device is faster than the hard drive on your system, you receive a performance boost when your system has flash memory devices attached. (This service doesn’t affect your ability to use the device in any way.) ◆ ReadyDrive improves disk performance by using the flash memory available on hybrid hard drives. These drives store commonly used information in flash memory, making access significantly faster.
46155book.book Page 11 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA? Print Management Console Microsoft has made it significantly easier to manage printers. The Print Management console lets you view the currently installed drivers, monitor printer status, add or delete printers, and perform administrative tasks such as assigning a printer to a port. Chapter 9 discusses this topic in detail. User Account Control (UAC) The biggest user-oriented change in Vista is the UAC.
46155book.book Page 12 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 12 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA New Deployment Tools Creating and managing setups for a large organization is time consuming to say the least. When working with previous versions of Windows, organizations often need to buy third-party imaging tools to create an image of the operating system for slipstream installations.
46155book.book Page 13 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA? Photo Gallery With so many people getting digital cameras, it’s no wonder that Microsoft added this feature. Photo Gallery helps you manage your digital pictures. You can view them, sort them, add information about them, print them locally, or send them to someone else. Chapter 12 provides complete information on this new tool.
46155book.book Page 14 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA group policies, the ADM template file remained with some minor modifications.
46155book.book Page 15 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA? Sync Center At one time, people associated the Sync Center with mobile devices. However, in Vista it provides a centralized location to sync anything with anything else. For example, you could edit a copy of a file locally on your hard drive and then sync the finished version with a file on a network drive. You can learn more about this technology in the “Using Sync Center” section of Chapter 8.
46155book.book Page 16 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 16 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA particular system. The index is simply a number that tells you how your system will perform. You can see this number at the top of the Welcome Center display shown in Figure 1.1. The reason that this tool is so controversial is that not everyone agrees that it provides a valid view of system functionality.
46155book.book Page 17 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS VISTA? Connect to a Network Projector Anyone who’s given a presentation knows that it can be difficult to make the correct connections to a project. Vista makes this process easier with the Connect to a Network Project utility. The utility actually searches the network for projectors and then makes suggestions on a connection. Mind you, this connection need not be wired; you can use a wireless connection.
46155book.book Page 18 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 18 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA Previous Versions for Files Windows has had restore points for quite some time. However, Vista handles this functionality differently. Yes, you can still create a full restore point and you can restore from a restore point. If your system experiences a major problem installing an application or performing a configuration, you can still roll back the change.
46155book.book Page 19 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM HOW IS WINDOWS VISTA DIFFERENT FROM OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS? Explorer if you have to share access to the system with your children. All of the new applications are helpful as well. A home user doesn’t need all of the capabilities of Outlook. With the addition of features such as Windows Calendar, you no longer have to decide between the cost of a full version of Windows and the functionality you require to get the job done.
46155book.book Page 20 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 20 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA user interface, and not all of them are graphical. As a group, UNIX operating systems are 32/64-bit, secure, and capable of running on a number of processor types. UNIX is mostly a server OS these days; it’s not very popular as a client OS anymore. In the past, artists and designers have used high-end UNIX-based workstations to create special effects for films. Vista, however, supports high-end 3D protocols.
46155book.book Page 21 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF WINDOWS VISTA ARCHITECTURE? The Macintosh OS is also no longer limited to special Macintosh hardware. Apple made the interesting choice to give up that unique hardware and now you can find the Macintosh OS running on an Intel system near you. Consequently, Windows has lost a bit of its edge for running on open hardware.
46155book.book Page 22 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 22 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA Executive Services Executive Services is a set of separate components that complete the underpinnings of the Vista kernel mode. Each Executive Service controls a specific function. The following is a brief overview of each of those functions. I/O Manager I/O Manager handles all communication between your applications and your hard disk.
46155book.book Page 23 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF WINDOWS VISTA ARCHITECTURE? Local Procedure Call Facility Local Procedure Call facility acts as a negotiator between user mode and kernel mode. From an internal standpoint, Vista uses a client-server model to administer itself. Just as Vista connects to a server and requests services from it, the Vista user mode requests services from the Vista kernel mode. Those requests are handled by local procedure calls.
46155book.book Page 24 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM 24 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING WINDOWS VISTA Table 1.1: User Mode Subsystems Subsystem Description Win32 Administers 32-bit and 16-bit Windows programs. OS/2 Administers character-based OS/2 programs. POSIX Administers POSIX programs, which are UNIX hybrids that can be run on any POSIXcompliant system, including Vista. They’re written to a series of application programming interfaces (APIs) that are platform independent.
46155book.book Page 25 Saturday, March 17, 2007 2:58 PM SUMMARY Summary This chapter has discussed what you need to know about Windows Vista in order to decide whether to upgrade to it or stay with your current version of Windows. You’ve discovered the new Vista editions and what they provide. The overview of new Vista features in this chapter should act as your guide to whether an upgrade makes sense. It’s time to do a little work on the upgrade of your system.
46155book.
