Geeky Info

Epic Empire talk about how CrystalXP has created a vista look-a-like theme for windows xp. So, if you want to experience the vista look now and cant wait for Microsoft to release it next year. Well you need to join the club but you can alleviate some of the pain and frustration during the waiting by having a theme that looks like Windows Vista.

Microsoft are possibly going to include some interesting safeguards to ensure that the computers that vista is loaded on, is approved by Microsoft.

‘WHEN MICROSOFT’S Vista arrives on machines, it looks like it may need a trusted platform model (TPM) chip to be present on the system.

That’s just one element of what Microsoft dubs “multi tiered data protection”, and the firm says that it will support full volume encryption to prevent disk access to files by other operating systems.

Microsoft is not entirely clear what this implies, however. It says that the entire system partition is encrypted and that includes both the hibernation file and your data as well.’

Read more here

Microsoft Vista will bring some changes for the Tablet PC. Hopefully, the new operating system will take the Tablet PC functionality to a new level. Zdnet reports that:

‘In Vista, the new incarnation of desktop Windows, due next year, the software giant will let people give the operating system examples of their own handwriting in an effort to improve handwriting recognition. The personalization feature, which is optional, is one of a number of Tablet PC enhancements disclosed this week as part of an updated test version of Vista.

Other new Tablet-specific features in this latest version of Vista include new “gestures” designed to make it easier to navigate through Web pages, send e-mail and manage other frequent tasks without having to switch to a keyboard.

Many of the changes are designed to make the software more predictable than prior versions, and ultimately expand sales of Tablet PC systems. “You get frustrated, and you are going to stop using it,” said Ian LeGrow, a group program manager in the Tablet PC unit. ‘

Read the whole article at Zdnet

Harry McCracken has writen an interesting article on the move by Microsoft from menus to ribbons. It is an interesting read – as I do think that Microsoft got the disappearing menus wrong in XP. I am not yet convinced that the ribbons will not just get in the way but I will wait for more information before making judgement

‘For years, Microsoft has contended that standard application menus laden with options are confusing. Maybe so–it certainly can be hard to figure out which menu holds the options you’re looking for, even if you know what you’re doing. But when the company tries to fix them–such as with the menus in Microsoft Office that hide some options based on your activity–it usually succeeds only in making things more complicated.

But Microsoft’s not giving up. One of the company’s goals for 2006 seems to be to make standard menus..well, something less than a standard item. The most radical de-menuing will apparently take place not in Vista but in the next version of Office, where the core apps will do away with them in favor of a horizontal “Ribbon” toolbar which changes depending on what you’re doing. Here’s a glimpse at the Ribbon in the next version of PowerPoint: ‘

Read the whole article here

Pcmagazine have got their hands on the latest windows vista build – 5308

“We’ve been running this latest release, build 5308, for a couple of days now, getting a feel for its capabilities while Microsoft prepared to make it available to the community of MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) subscribers, TechNet users, and registered beta testers. Our expectations, set high by the quality of the previous December CTP (build 5270), were largely met. We found this build of Vista is responsive and highly usable, though still far from bullet-proof (as is to be expected for beta software). Aside from some of the predictable problems with hardware-device support and still-buggy features, one particular problem was that Windows Explorer crashes frequently. To Microsoft’s credit, these crashes were hardly dramatic, since Explorer managed to restart itself and resume each time.”

Read the full article here