What's new in Windows Vista Build 5270?

After many months of development and among speculations about the availability of all the core features in the future version of Windows, as promised in PDC 2003 of Windows, Microsoft has finally released a near-complete feature of Windows Vista last month. This Community technology preview (CTP) was released to beta testers as well as MSDN subscribers.

A look at the interface will reveal that Microsoft has spent a lot of time in revamping the entire look and feel of Vista. Right from the "Start menu" to all the common areas such as personalization, customization, browsing you will see a complete overall to the functioning of Windows Vista. In addition you will also see that the behavior of most of them has dramatically changed compared to the current version of Windows XP.

In addition, it is seen that there are a lot of new utilities that have been added to Windows Vista. Some of the utilities that have been completely overhauled or added, could be worthwhile. Here's a list:

The Aero look

The most dramatic change is the visual appearance and Microsoft has made a lot of progress towards the final Aero look and feel in this build. Of course you will need the latest video adapters with support for LDDM (Longhorn Device Driver Model) now renamed to Windows Device Driver Model to see the 3-D appearance of Aero.

UAP

Another feature that will catch most user's attention is the "User Account Protection" (UAP). Currently the non-administrative account does not allow users to make changes to their system including adding/removing software. This caused frustration when they wanted to make minor changes and that meant they had to switch over to the build in Administrator's account in order to tweak with the operating system.

Malicious software, or malware, typically runs under the privilege level of the user currently operating the computer and with most users running with elevated privileges by default, this caused a nightmare for the users and they often ended up with malware-infected computers and this wrecked havoc on their entire systems.

Windows Vista changes the traditional Windows privilege model to help prevent users from running programs that attempt to perform operations that the user doesn't really intend or authorize.

User Account Protection (formerly called Least-privileged User Account, or LUA) enables users to run at low privilege most of the time, while being able to easily run applications requiring more privilege as necessary. This means that users (including the build in administrator) will run with the minimum privileges at all times. When they attempt to execute any program that needs elevated privileges, Windows Vista will automatically prompt the user for the administrator's password, and if the user provides it, then Windows Vista will elevate the privileges temporarily for the lifetime of the session. On completion of the execution of the program, the system will revert back to the minimum privileges. This ensures that the user is protected at all times even if he is logged in as administrator.

Performance has also improved a lot and it is seen that most applications run much faster on Windows Vista than they did on Windows XP.

SuperFetch

I will end this introduction, with an exciting feature that is new in Vista and that is known as the "SuperFetch". Most of the time users have been constrained with limited memory on their workstations and it was also difficult to adjust with the virtual memory based on the work done by the user. Windows Vista changes this all by giving users the ability to insert a USB Flash drive to provide additional memory that can then be employed by Windows SuperFetch.

SuperFetch proactively loads all or part of the customer's most-often-used applications and files into unallocated system memory before they are needed by the system. Windows SuperFetch adapts to a customer's usage patterns, optimizing the utilization of available memory to help keep the PC performance at its peak.

In the forthcoming articles, I will explore other features that have been added or revamped in Windows Vista.

Disclaimer: "Since Windows Vista is still in its development stages there is no guarantee that the features explained will be there in the final version and is subject to change. This article should be taken only for getting a general idea of what is going to be available in Windows Vista and not the actual features that will be a part of the final release of Windows Vista."