Datasheet

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. You can discover more

about this feature in Chapter 11.

iSCSI Initiator

The Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) Initiator helps you use storage devices on

another machine. These devices (such as tapes, hard drives, CDs, or DVDs) can include anything

that already supports iSCSI as a target. The iSCSI Initiator service makes a request of the remote

drive using standardized methods. You can make the request from a LAN, WAN, or the Internet

with equal ease. The Vista software also works with Storage Area Networks (SANs). You can learn

more about working with iSCSI in Chapter 10.

.NET Framework 2.0/3.0

Developers are creating more and more .NET applications. In the past, developers created native

applications where the compiler changed code from human readable form to machine code.

.NET applications are managed; a special interpreter reads a tokenized form of the application

at runtime and changes it to machine code form. Not only are managed applications easier to code,

they also provide a significant number of advantages. For example, you can make a .NET applica-

tion a lot more secure because an intermediary application is interpreting them. In addition, you

can theoretically run managed applications on a number of non-Windows platforms without

creating special versions for that platform. The MONO project (http://www.mono-project.com/

Main_Page) seeks to move .NET applications from Windows to other platforms including Linux,

Mac OS X, Solaris, and UNIX.

Previous versions of Windows required that you make a separate download of the .NET

Framework. Many people felt this was too much work considering the size of the download.

Vista comes with this support installed. You can learn more about working with the .NET

Framework in Chapter 33.

Complete PC Backup

When Microsoft says that backup is now complete, you can actually believe them. The old NTBackup

application was in dire need of update. Let’s face it: not many people use tapes any longer for small

to moderate backups. DVDs, removable hard drives, and network drives make better choices. Vista

provides all of these choices.

Of course, NTBackup was always best at creating a backup of individual files and it wasn’t

all that easy to restore them. Vista also changes the backup and restore options. You can backup

single files, groups of files, or the entire system. An entire system backup is an actual copy of

everything on the drive that you can use to restore everything on your machine in the event of

a hard drive failure. The restore process is just as flexible. It’s actually easy to backup and restore

files in Vista.

My favorite feature, however, isn’t the flexibility or the media choices. Vista can perform

backups automatically to whatever media you choose. Using automatic backups means that you

don’t have to remember to get the job done; Vista does it for you. Chapter 29 discusses this topic

in detail.

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