What s New Under the Hood


What's New Under the Hood

The Windows Vista interface has been garnering most of the attention in the beta program, but Vista also offers plenty of new and improved features under the hood, as the next few sections show.

Support for Document Metadata

Metadata is data that describes data. For example, if you have some digital photos on your computer, you could use metadata to describe each image: the person who took the picture, the camera used, tags that describe the image itself, and so on. Windows Vista comes with built-in support for document metadata, enabling you to add and edit properties such as the Title, Comments, Tags, Author, and Rating (1 to 5 stars).

Windows not only gives you easier ways to edit metadata (for example, you can click the Edit link right in the folder window's Preview pane), but it also makes good use of meta-data to make your life easier:

Note

For the complete details on metadata, see the section "Metadata and the Windows Explorer Property System" in Chapter 4.


  • Searching The Windows Search service indexes metadata (tags) so you can search for documents using any metadata property as a query operand.

  • Grouping This refers to organizing a folder's contents according to the values in a particular property. This was also possible in Windows XP, but Windows Vista improves upon XP by adding techniques that enable you to quickly select all the files in a group and to collapse a group to show only its header.

  • Stacking This is similar to grouping because it organizes the folder's contents based on the values of a property. The difference is that a stack of files appears in the folder as a kind of subfolder.

  • Filtering This refers to changing the folder view so that only files that have one or more specified property values are displayed. For example, you could filter the folder's files to show only those in which the Kind property was, say, Email or Music.

Performance Improvements

When I tell people that I'm testing a prerelease version of Windows, the first question they inevitably ask is, "Is it faster than [insert their current Windows version here]?" Everybody wants Windows to run faster, but that's primarily because most of us are running systems that have had the same OS installed for several years. One of the bitter truths of computing is that even the most meticulously well maintained system will slow down over time. On such systems, the only surefire way to get a big performance boost is to wipe the hard drive and start with a fresh OS install.

The Windows Vista Setup program essentially does just that (preserving and restoring your files and settings along the way, of course). So the short answer to the previous question is, "Yes, Vista will be faster than your existing system." However, that performance gain comes not just from a fresh install, but also because Microsoft has tweaked the Windows code for more speed:

  • Faster startup Microsoft has optimized the Vista startup code and implemented asynchronous startup script and application launching. This means that Vista doesn't delay startup by waiting for initialization scripts to complete their chores. It simply completes its own startup tasks while the scripts run in their own good time in the background.

  • Sleep mode Actually, you can reduce Vista startup to just a few seconds by taking advantage of the new Sleep mode, which combines the best features of the XP Hibernate and Standby modes. Like Hibernate, Sleep mode preserves all your open documents, windows, and programs, and it completely shuts down your computer. However, like Standby, you enter Sleep mode within just a few seconds, and you resume from Sleep mode within just a few seconds.

  • SuperFetch This technology tracks the programs and data you use over time to create a kind of profile of your disk usage. Using the profile, SuperFetch can then make an educated guess about the data that you'll require; like XP's Prefetcher, it can then load that data into memory ahead of time for enhanced performance. SuperFetch can also work with Vista's new ReadyBoost technology, which uses a USB 2.0 Flash drive as storage for the SuperFetch cache, which should provide improved performance even further by freeing up the RAM that SuperFetch would otherwise use.

  • Restart Manager This feature enables patches and updates to install much more intelligently. Now you often have to reboot when you install a patch because Windows can't shut down all the processes associated with the application you're patching. Restart Manager keeps track of all running processes and, in most cases, can shut down all of an application's processes so that the patch can be installed without requiring a reboot.

Note

I talk about Vista's performance and stability improvements in Chapter 5, "Vista Performance and Maintenance."


Stability Improvements

The second thing that people always ask about a forthcoming version of Windows is, "Will it crash less often? Microsoft has had nearly a quarter of a century to get Windows right, so why can't they produce a glitch-free operating system?" I have to break the news to my frustrated interlocutors that what they seek is almost certainly impossible. Windows is just too big and complex, and the number of software permutations and hardware combinations is just too huge to ensure complete system stability in all setups.

That doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't at least trying to make Windows more stable. Here's what they've done in Vista:

  • I/O cancellation Windows often fails because some program has crashed and brought the OS down with it. The usual cause of this is that a program has made an input/output (I/O) request to a service, resource, or another program, but that process is unavailable; this results in a stuck program that requires a reboot to recover. To prevent this, Vista implements an improved version of a technology called I/O cancellation, which can detect when a program is stuck waiting for an I/O request and then cancel that request to help the program recover from the problem.

  • Reliability monitor This new feature keeps track of the overall stability of your system, as well as reliability events, which are either changes to your system that could affect stability or occurrences that might indicate instability. Reliability events include Windows updates, software installs and uninstalls, device driver installs, updates, rollbacks and uninstalls, device driver problems, and Windows failures. Reliability monitors graphs these changes and a measure of system stability over time so that you can graphically see whether any changes affected system stability.

  • Service recovery Many Windows services are mission-critical, and if they fail, it almost always means that the only way to recover your system is to shut down and restart your computer. With Windows Vista, however, every service has a recovery policy that enables Vista not only to restart the service, but also to reset any other service or process that is dependent on the failed service.

  • Startup Repair Tool Troubleshooting startup problems is not for the faint-of-heart, but you may never have to perform this onerous core again, thanks to Vista's new Startup Repair Tool (SRT), which is designed to fix many common startup problems automatically. When a startup failure occurs, Vista starts the SRT immediately. The program then analyzes the startup logs and performs a series of diagnostic tests to determine the cause of the startup failure.

  • New diagnostic tools Windows Vista is loaded with new and improved diagnostic tools. These include Disk Diagnostics (which monitors the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or SMART, data generated by most modern hard disks), Windows Memory Diagnostics (which works with Microsoft Online Crash Analysis to determine whether program crashes are caused by defective physical memory), Memory Leak Diagnosis (which looks for and fixes programs that are using up increasing amounts of memory), Windows Resource Exhaustion Detection and Resolution (RADAR, which monitors virtual memory and issues a warning when resources run low, and also identifies which programs or processes are using the most virtual memory and includes a list of these resource hogs as part of the warning), Network Diagnostics (which analyzes all aspects of the network connection and then either fixes the problem or gives the user simple instructions for resolving the situation), and the Windows Diagnostic Console (which enables you to monitor performance metrics).

Security Enhancements

With reports of new Windows XP vulnerabilities coming in with stomach-lurching regularity, we all hope that Vista has a much better security track record. It's still too early to telland nefarious hackers are exceptionally cleverbut it certainly looks as though Microsoft is heading in the right direction with Vista:

Note

You can get a detailed look at Vista and security in Chapter 6, "Security Enhancements in Windows Vista."


  • User Account Control This newand very controversialfeature ensures that every Vista user runs with only limited privileges, even those accounts that are part of the Administrators group (except the Administrator account itself). In other words, each user runs as a "least privileged user," which means users have only the minimum privileges they require for day-to-day work. This also means that any malicious user or program that gains access to the system also runs with only limited privileges, thus limiting the amount of damage they can do. The downside (and the source of the controversy) is that you constantly get pestered with security dialog boxes that ask for your approval or credentials to perform even trivial tasks, such as deleting certain files.

  • Windows Firewall This feature is now bidirectional, which means that it blocks not only unauthorized incoming traffic, but also unauthorized outgoing traffic. For example, if your computer has a Trojan horse installed, it may attempt to send data out to the Web, but the firewall's outgoing protection will prevent this.

  • Windows Defender This is the Windows Vista antispyware program. (Spyware is a program that surreptitiously monitors a user's computer activities or harvests sensitive data on the user's computer, and then sends that information to an individual or a company via the user's Internet connection.) Windows Defender prevents spyware from being installed on your system and also monitors your system in real time to look for signs of spyware activity.

  • Internet Explorer Protected mode This new operating mode for Internet Explorer builds upon the User Account Control feature. Protected mode means that Internet Explorer runs with a privilege level that's enough to surf the Web, but that's about it. Internet Explorer can't install software, modify the user's files or settings, add shortcuts to the Startup folder, or even change its own settings for the default home page and search engine. This is designed to thwart spyware and other malicious programs that attempt to gain access to your system through the web browser.

  • Phishing Filter Phishing refers to creating a replica of an existing web page to fool a user into submitting personal, financial, or password data. Internet Explorer's new Phishing Filter can alert you when you surf to a page that is a known phishing site, or it can warn you if the current page appears to be a phishing scam.

  • Junk Mail Filter Windows Mail (the Vista replacement for Outlook Express) comes with an antispam filter based on the one that's part of Microsoft Outlook. The Junk Mail Filter uses a sophisticated algorithm to scan incoming messages for signs of spam. If it finds any, it quarantines the spam in a separate Junk Mail folder.

  • Windows Service Hardening This new technology is designed to limit the damage that a compromised service can wreak upon a system by (among other things) running all services in a lower privilege level, stripping services of permissions that they don't require, and applying restrictions to services that control exactly what they can do on a system.

  • Secure Startup This technology encrypts the entire system drive to prevent a malicious user from accessing your sensitive data. Secure Startup works by storing the keys that encrypt and decrypt the sectors on a system drive in a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 chip, which is a hardware component available on many newer machines.

  • Network Access Protection (NAP) This service checks the health status of a computer, including its installed security patches, downloaded virus signatures, and security settings. If any of the health items are not completely up-to-date or within the network guidelines, the NAP enforcement service (running on a server that supports this feature) either doesn't let the computer log on to the network or shuttles the computer off to a restricted area of the network.

  • Parental Controls This feature enables you to place restrictions on the user accounts that you've assigned to your children. Using the new User Controls window in the Control Panel, you can allow or block specific websites, set up general site restrictions (such as Kids Websites Only), block content categories (such as Pornography, Mature Content, and Bomb Making), block file downloads, set time limits for computer use, allow or disallow games, restrict games based on ratings and contents, and allow or block specific programs.

Windows Presentation Foundation

The Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Vista's new graphical subsystem, and it's responsible for all the interface changes in the Vista package. WPF implements a new graphics model that can take full advantage of today's powerful graphics processing units (GPUs). With WPF, all output goes through the powerful Direct3D layer (so the CPU doesn't have to deal with any graphics); this output also is all vector based, so WPF produces extremely high-resolution images that are completely scalable.

Desktop Window Manager

The Desktop Window Manager (DWM) is a new technology that assumes control over the screen display. With Vista, applications draw their graphics to an off-screen buffer, and then the DWM composites the buffer contents on the screen.

Improved Graphics

The combination of the WPF and DWM means that Vista graphics are the best Windows graphics ever. Program and document windows no longer "tear" when you move them quickly across the screen, animations applied to actions such as minimizing a window are richer and more effective, icons scale up and down with no loss of quality, and transparency effects are applied to window title bars and borders.

Transactional NTFS

The Windows Vista file system implements a new technology called Transactional NTFS, or TxF, for short. TxF applies transactional database ideas to the file system. This means that if some mishap occurs to your datait could be a system crash, a program crash, an overwrite to an important file, or even just imprudent edits to a fileVista allows you to roll back the file to a previous version. It's a lot like the System Restore feature, except that it works not for the entire system, but for individual files, folders, and volumes.

XML Paper Specification

Windows Vista supports a new Microsoft document format called the XML Paper Specification, or XPS. This is an XML schema designed to create documents that are high-fidelity reproductions of existing documents. In other words, documents published as XPS and opened in an XPS viewer program should look exactly the same as they do in the original application. Microsoft has incorporated an XPS viewer into Windows Vista, so any Vista user will automatically be able to view XPS documents. (The viewer runs within Internet Explorer.)

Microsoft is also licensing XPS royalty-free so developers can incorporate XPS viewing and publishing features into their products without cost. This means it should be easy to publish XPS documents from a variety of applications.




Microsoft Windows Vista Unveiled
Microsoft Windows Vista Unveiled
ISBN: 0672328933
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 122

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net