Windows Insight

Or: The First Step Off The Deep End

Well, last night I went and did it.  I installed Windows Vista RC1, Build 5600, on my notebook computer -- after making a full partition image, just to be safe.  The whole install process -- which I did from a clean boot, no upgrade -- took about an hour, and when it was done I sat down and got my first close look at the way Vista works.  I know there have been some changes since RC1 was released (most notably to the annoying black of the Taskbar), but I figured enough has been nailed down that I can at least try to start using the OS provisionally.

What I'd like to do is publish a series of articles that talk about some of the new things in Vista, but from the point of view of an existing Windows user.  A lot of other people have talked about Aero Glass and the security features, but I'd like to tackle this from the perspective of someone who has been using XP for a long time and is now, suddenly, a Vista user.  What do they see, and what will they do?  I figured I'd be as good a guinea pig as most people.

If there's one thing I've consistently hated about Windows, it's the lack of a good backup and restore solution.  Sure, there's the NTBACKUP tool, but it doesn't let you create a full-system backup you can restore to "bare metal": you have to have a working Windows installation to use it, which kind of obviates the point if your system's toast.

Someone at Microsoft was thinking, though, and one of the Vista features that has gladdened my heart to see is the ability to not just back up files and folders, but to back up and restore a whole system from scratch.  XP users who have had to rely on copying files by hand, struggling with NTBACKUP, working with freeware that doesn't cover all the bases or shelling out cash for an actual third-party backup solution are going to love this.  I know I do.

Incidentally, our old friend System Restore is still here, and in much the same condition, but for the time being I'll talk in detail about the new backup/restore functions; a discussion of System Restore can wait for another article.

Among the many, many changes made to Windows Vista, the one that's drawn the most attention is User Account Control, or UAC for short.  In this article I'm going to talk about UAC as it'll affect someone who's come in from XP, and may be surprised to find that things they did before without consequence are now being interrupted.

Like many other key functions in Vista, the way users access networking and network resources has also been reworked.  The vast majority of networking functions are now consolidated in one place instead of being spread out over a number of different dialogs.  The new networking interface actually seems patterned after something we've seen in XP Service Packs 1 and 2: the Security Center.

However, I found a few gotchas that are worth noting -- mostly in the way Vista now handles certain kinds of file and folder sharing.  I'm hoping this is a RC1 issue and not something we see in the finished product.  But let's start with the good stuff, because the good stuff really is very good.

As many of us know, Windows XP had its own indexed search system, but it was one of XP's most underused and badly-implemented idea.  Vista's systemwide search system takes the same basic idea -- crawl the most commonly-used directories of the user's PC for content which can be indexed for fast searching -- and gets it mostly right.

The bad news: if you're used to the way XP does searching, you're going to need to learn how to do this from scratch.  The good news: the new search system, while it does have its quirks, can be learned and modified relatively easily.  The best news: it works like magic.

Two of the new file-organization concepts that Windows Vista has brought to the table are outgrowths of existing ideas that may be familiar to some people but not to others: tagging and stacking  (or stacks).  In this edition of the XP Guide to Vista I'll be exploring these two features in tandem.

One of the features touted in both Windows XP and Windows Vista is a set of power-conservation features that encompass both desktop and notebook PCs.  Saving power on a notebook PC is an obvious benefit, but reducing desktop power consumption has now become a much bigger deal than it might have seemed even five years ago.  With Intel and AMD rolling out CPUs that boast of less wattage, it makes sense for Microsoft to provide additional fine-grained control over power consumption on their end.

To a high degree, that's what they've done with Windows Vista, and XP users are going to want to know how to dig into all that and make use of it.

By default Windows XP comes with virtually nothing to protect the system against malware -- save for the Windows Firewall, which is not really an anti-malware system anyway.  If you want to do something about malware in XP, you'll need to turn to a third-party product.

With Vista, this has changed, although it's still a subject of broad debate if it's changed for the better.  Microsoft's own anti-malware product, Windows Defender, comes installed with Vista and is on by default.  If you want to use it, this guide will walk you through the basics of Defender and how to make it work for you; if you'd rather do without it entirely (and substitute in another, Vista-compatible protection program), I'll of course talk about how to disable it.  (If you want to disable it now, skip ahead to section 2.1.5.)