Windows Vista

Today, along with a keynote speech by Bill Gates, Microsoft released more information about its next Windows version called “Vista”.  If you’re interested in reading the marketing buzz and viewing pretty images you can go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx for more information.

One new interface enhancement is called “Sidebar”.  The Sidebar can be populated with a variety of new custom objects called “Gadgets”.

Most of the gadgets demo’d provided dynamic displays like video or real-time RSS data.

The new Internet Explorer sports a new “Tabbed” interface which will display large thumbnails of all the pages you currently have open making toggling between sites easier.

Internet Explorer also introduces a new Account Protection which allows you to protect many of the settings currently monitored by AntiSpyware programs like, Start/Search Page settings, HOSTS file, Trusted sites and Startup “folder” protection.  Not sure what they mean by Startup “folder”.  I would hope it includes all critical Startup locations in the registry.

Security and Spyware protection provided by “Windows Defender” will be built into Vista. According to Steve Dodson’s WebLog it can be disabled if you’d like to use a 3rd party anti-spyware application. One of the advantages Microsoft will have is, new “Signatures” which define malware will be updated via Windows own update engine as Automatic Updates.