| All writers write with an audience in mind. Actually, I'm not sure whether that's true for novelists and poets and the like, but it should be true for any technical writer who wants to create a useful and comprehensible book. Here are the members of my own imagined audience: IT professionals These brave souls must decide whether to move to Vista, work out deployment issues, and support the new Vista desktops. The whole book has information related to your job and Vista. Developers Microsoft created many new technologies for Vista developers, including Windows Presentation Foundation, WinFX, RSS, and the Windows PowerShell (now a separate product that will ship around the same time as Vista). Although you won't learn any programming techniques in this book, I've kept you in mind in my discussions of the new Vista architecture and technologies. Power users These elite users get their power via knowledge. With that in mind, this book extends the Windows power user's know-how by presenting an exhaustive account of everything that's new and improved in Windows Vista. Business users If your company is thinking of or has already committed to moving to Vista, then you need to know what you, your colleagues, and your staff are getting into. You also want to know what Vista will do to improve your productivity and make your life at the office easier. You learn all of this and more in this book. Road warriors If you travel for a living, you probably want to know what Vista brings to the remote computing table. Will you be able to synchronize data, connect to the network, and manage power better than before? What other new notebook features can be found in Vista? You'll find out in this book. Small business owners If you run a small or home business, you probably want to know whether Vista will give you a good return on investment. Will it make it easier to set up and maintain a network? Will Vista computers be more stable? Will your employees be able to collaborate easier? The answer turns out to be "Yes" for all of these questions, and I'll show you why. Multimedia users If you use your computer to listen to music or radio stations, watch TV, work with digital photographs, edit digital movies, or burn CDs and DVDs, then you'll be interested to know that Vista has a handful of new features that affect all of these activities. Gamers The PC video game crowd are the ones who, in the end, stand to gain the most from moving to Vista because Microsoft has given its new OS a souped-up graphics engine that should enable game developers to perform some amazing feats that might even outstrip the effects seen on dedicated game consoles. I'll tell you what's new and why it may take gaming to a whole new level.
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