A breakthrough design that brings your world into sharper focus.
- Enjoy the elegant, visually compelling Windows Aero desktop
experience with Windows Flip 3D navigation.
- Quickly find what you need on your computer or the Internet with
Instant Search.
- Organize, edit, and share your favorite memories with family and
friends using the new Windows Photo Gallery.
- Bring live information like weather and news directly to your
desktop with easy-to-use gadgets in Windows Sidebar
Better protection than any previous Windows operating system for your
PC, personal information, and your family.
- Help protect private information and remove spyware with Windows
Defender.
- Keep your children safer online with improved, customizable Parental
Controls.
- Backup data with the new, automated Scheduled and Network Backup.
- Help protect your PC and your personal information against malicious
software, fraudulent websites, and online phishing scams with Windows
Internet Explorer 7
A complete home entertainment experience, virtually anywhere in your
house.
- Manage and enjoy your favorite digital photos, music, TV shows, and
movies in your living room with Windows Media Center.
- Enjoy Windows Media Center entertainment on TVs throughout your home
with Xbox 360 and other devices connected to your home network!
- Organize, edit and share a lifetime of photo and video memories with
family and friends using Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker.
- Burn your slideshows and home movies to a DVD with DVD Maker and
watch them on your PC or a DVD player whenever
Breakthrough Security
Windows Vista is engineered to be the most secure version of Windows yet.
The new features in Windows Vista help to give you the control and
confidence you need to get the most out of your PC. Windows Vista contains a
number of new security features that, taken together, are designed to make
Windows Vista-based PCs more secure and your online experiences safer. The
improvements are designed to help you have:
- A PC protected from viruses, worms, spyware, and other potentially
unwanted software
- A safer online experience for you and your family
- An understanding of when your PC is unsafe, and the control and guidance
to help improve your security
Powerful Search & Organization
Windows Vista gives you more flexibility when you search and organize your
files.
New controls, like the Instant Search box and Enhanced Column Headers,
make it simple for you to manage large amounts of on-screen data any way you
want. With Windows Vista, you no longer have to remember where you store
every file. Instead, to find a file, you need to only remember something
about it, such as a word contained within a document, the artist of a song,
or the date a picture was taken.
Powerful, integrated desktop search capabilities help you find just about
anything on your computer quickly, without having to search for it by
browsing through folders. For example, in the new Start Menu, it is as
simple as typing a word, a phrase, a property, or any part of a file name
into the embedded Instant Search box to instantly find the file that you
want.
Enhanced and Enriched Windows Internet Explorer 7
Windows Vista enhances the Internet Explorer experience. The upcoming
release of Internet Explorer 7 not only adds important new security and
privacy features, but also makes everyday tasks easier through features such
as tabbed browsing, inline search, and shrink-to-fit printing. Internet
Explorer 7 also provides new tools to give you direct access to information
you want, with built-in support for web feeds known as Really Simple
Syndication (RSS). RSS is a technology you can use to have information sent
to you, so you don't have to look for it. Through RSS subscriptions, you can
automatically receive feeds (lists) of headlines from Internet sites.
Internet Explorer 7 discovers these feeds on sites and allows you to preview
and subscribe to them. Once you subscribe, Internet Explorer 7
systematically consolidates headlines from each feed into one list. This
lets you quickly browse new information from various sites without having to
visit each site separately.
Windows Sidebar and Gadgets
As you use your computer to access more information, perform more tasks, and
interact with more software applications, you increasingly face information
overload. You open a web browser just to check the weather, open an
application to view your calendar, and open a calculator program to simply
add numbers. You need simple, specialized, and lightweight mini-applications
that put information and tasks at your fingertips—no matter what you're
doing.
Windows Sidebar boosts your personal productivity by providing instant
access to gadgets—a wide variety of engaging, easy-to-use, and customizable
mini-applications that offer information at a glance and provide easy access
to frequently used tools.
Spectacular Performance
Windows Vista is designed to help make you more productive as you work with
your PC throughout the day with new features like Sleep, Windows SuperFetch,
Windows ReadyBoost, and Windows ReadyDrive.
Windows SuperFetch helps manage memory to get the most out of available
RAM while Windows ReadyBoost helps make PCs more responsive by using flash
memory devices (like USB thumb drives) to boost performance. Windows
ReadyDrive takes advantage of new hybrid hard disks—hard disks with
integrated flash memory—to help improve battery life, performance, and
reliability. With Windows Vista, your system is ready when you are.
Valuable Backup Innovations
Windows Vista provides valuable new innovations to help ensure you never
lose information that is important to you. Windows Vista offers multiple
layers of backup and restore protection from hardware failure, user error,
or other issues. These innovations include system restore enhancements, a
new feature called Windows Backup, and a related feature: Previous Versions,
based on the Volume Shadow Copy technology which was first introduced with
the Windows Server product family. These features are presented in a single,
unified Windows Backup and Restore Center.
Enhanced Networking Features
Windows Vista includes new networking features that make your network easier
to set up, easier to use, and more secure and reliable. Connect wirelessly
to your company's network, share an Internet connection and printers, copy
files between computers, or enjoy your favorite entertainment around your
home. Whether at home, a small business, or a large enterprise, Windows
Vista makes connectivity easier so you can focus on what matters to you.
Windows Vista puts you in control of your network experience with the
Network Center—the central place for all your networking needs. Network
Center informs you about the network your computer is connected to and
verifies whether it can successfully reach the Internet. It even presents
this information in a summary in the Network Map so you can immediately see
your connectivity to the network and Internet. If a PC on the network loses
Internet connectivity, you can graphically see that the link is down, and
then use Network Diagnostics to help determine the cause of the problem and
get a suggestion for a solution.
Windows Sideshow
If you use a laptop computer, you know that starting up your laptop just to
check a message or find an address or phone number isn’t always practical.
Windows Vista SideShow technology enables laptop manufacturers to include a
secondary or auxiliary display in future laptop designs.
This display can be used to easily view the critical information you
need, whether the laptop is on, off, or in sleep mode. The convenience
provided by these auxiliary displays will save time and battery life by
allowing you to quickly view meeting schedules, phone numbers, addresses,
and recent e-mail messages without having to start up your laptop.
Speech Recognition
Speech Recognition in Windows Vista empowers you to interact with your
computer by voice. It allows you to significantly limit your use of mouse
and keyboard while maintaining or increasing productivity. You can dictate
documents and e-mail messages in mainstream applications, fill out forms on
the web using voice commands, and seamlessly manage Windows Vista and
applications by saying what you see. Speech Recognition is fully integrated
into Windows Vista and is built on top of the latest Microsoft speech
technologies. It has unparalleled voice recognition accuracy that improves
with use as it adapts to your speaking style and vocabulary. Speech
Recognition supports multiple languages and includes a new human-sounding
speech synthesizer.
Help and Feedback
With a number of features to streamline problem resolution, Windows Vista is
designed to provide better self-help and improve centralized tools for
support professionals.
Windows Vista itself detects, diagnoses, and helps you respond to common
problems. But when incidents that require support do occur, Windows Vista
provides centralized support tools and resources to quickly diagnose and
resolve issues.
Remote Assistance
With Remote Assistance, you can get help from a support professional or
other trusted user, even if that person is in a remote location. With your
permission, Remote Assistance allows a trusted helper to share control of
your computer and help you resolve issues. In Windows Vista, Remote
Assistance is greatly enhanced, featuring faster performance and the ability
to assist users whether they are at home, on the road, or at a remote
location. Remote Assistance is now a standalone application, providing
markedly faster startup and connectivity, and has been optimized to use less
network bandwidth.
Windows Update
Windows Update helps to keep your computer up to date and more secure by
providing Microsoft Windows Vista software updates. You can configure
Windows Update to automatically download and install updates for you. You
can essentially “set it and forget it.” In Windows Vista, the capabilities
of Windows Update are extended beyond the features available in Windows XP
and make updating easier and less disruptive.
Vista at Home…
With Windows Vista, you’ll enter an astonishing new world of entertainment
possibilities in your home, with exciting new ways to preserve and enjoy
digital memories and music.
Experience Memories
Windows Vista lets you handle your digital memories in a truly intuitive
way. It's the center for your digital memories, where you can import your
pictures, organize and find them, make basic corrections, and save them to
CD or DVD. It's also your photo gallery, with a virtually endless number of
photo albums and a variety of ways to share pictures with your friends and
family.
With Windows Vista, your photos and the tools you need are all in one
place. Whether you're working with photos or video, editing or e-mailing
your pictures, or putting together a slide show for your next party, you
will have the tools to get it done—and more—quickly and easily. With Windows
Vista you can import your camera to your computer, find your pictures easily
and share them with friends and family with e-mail, prints or even
slideshows on your TV.
Experience Music the Way You Want it To Be. With Windows Vista, your
entire music collection creates the soundtrack to your life. Use Windows
Media Player 11 to enjoy a seamless connection to your portable devices,
satisfy a new musical URGE, and keep your growing digital music collection
organized. Or really crank things up and change the way you see and listen
to your music by soaking it all in with Windows Media Center in Windows
Vista and your Xbox 360.