This marks the half-way point in the Touring Windows Vista article series.  The process of writing these articles forced me to dig deeper and look closer at Vista than I would have otherwise.  Today's installment is going to look at the new tools given to you in the Control Panel area, as well as the applications and games Microsoft has bundled with the OS this time around.  So today's article will be most interesting to those of you who are wondering what immediate improvements/changes there are to the OS that will impact your day-to-day use.

The Control Panel

The command center of any version of Windows has been the Control Panel.  It's here that any misc setting you typically could want is to be found and tweaked.  This is one of the few cases where Vista is consistent with previous versions.  However, this time around you'll find a lot more crammed into the window. 

First things first, you have to switch to the Classic View, just like you did in XP to actually see all the options available to you.  In Vista Ultimate, you're presented with a whopping 48 different control panels to choose from, and this is ignoring items like Administrative Tools which is really a folder leading to additional tools.

At first glance, I spotted several new Control Panels:

 

AutoPlay Where you can set exactly how what sorts of CDs and other media autoplay when inserted.  Previously you'd have to dig around to find where these settings were.  Good addition to the control panel   Backup and Restore Center A fairly basic and easy to use backup utility.  It will allow you to either back up specific files (with some common presets for your My Documents folder) or the entire PC.  You can back things up to another drive, a DVD, or even the network.   BitLocker Drive Encryption Welcome to the world of whole-disk encryption.  This is mainly targeted at laptop users in business environments who require every bit of data on their system to be encrypted.  It requires specially setup partitions and some TPM tech enabled on your BIOS.  This will not be relevant to most people who get Vista.  This is the next step up from Windows Encrypting File System.   Color Management This feature is beyond me.  From what I can tell is it allows you to set your system to display color sets based on the type of content you're trying to display.  This is far more important to graphic designers and others who find themselves needing perfect color reproduction.   Indexing Options You know how the new search built into Windows seems so fast and responsive?  It's because Windows is starting to index the content of your drive to make searches go faster.  This panel lets you specify what sorts of files to index, lets you manually rebuild the index if you want etc.    Offline Files Like in Windows XP, offline files are temporary copies of any items you pulled from the Internet or a network drive.  Here you set how much space you want to allow them to take up, whether to encrypt them, as well as other management options   Parental Controls This new feature squarely places Vista on the "worth considering" list of any parent with a household PC.  You can set content restrictions, usage time limits, enforce game ratings, and section off certain applications as being unusable.  Additionally, parent users can view account activity logs covering websites visited, files downloaded etc.   Pen and Input Devices Since Vista comes bundled with all the Tablet PC features, this is where you mess with pen behavior settings   People Near Me This is an interesting little feature for users on a LAN.  It will allow you to spot other Vista users nearby so you can initiate Windows Meeting Space sessions with them.  One of the many online collaboration tools MS is working on   Performance Information This is where the power user will spend a LOT of time while tweaking Vista, or trying to track down problems.  This single control panel deserves its own section to describe.   Personalization This is what used to be "Display Properties"  Now, instead of getting a single window with a number of tabs full of settings, you get a window with a number of links that open their own windows.  Each tab from XP is essentially a link on this new window.  This is the interface you get when you right click on the desktop and look for Properties.... which is now called Personalize.  Yes, that's right, another UI inconsistency.   Programs & Features Gone is Add/Remove Programs.  Now it's Programs and Features.   Speech Recognition Options Turns out Vista has the beginnings of speech recognition built into it.  You can train your PC to your voice, and dictate documents provided you talk slowly and enunciate enough.  Whether or not this works well remains to be seen.  I'll test it some other day and give you a report.   Sync Center Allows you to setup file synchronization between network locations, portable devices etc.   Tablet PC Settings Like the Pen input panel, this is more config options for Tablet PC users.   Windows CardSpace This is a very strange one, it looks like it's an information service where you create an identity card of sorts for yourself and you use those cards when you need to provide sites with personal information.  You can select what cards of yours a site can see.  So some sites, like your bank, you may want to let them have a little more info than some Cheese of the Month Club page.  This one deserves a separate article later on.   Windows Sidebar Basic options for the Sidebar. Load on startup?  Which side of the screen?  Which monitor should it display on?   Windows SideShow Use your PDA or cell phone as a secondary monitor... sort of.  Plug your PDA in and it could just display email, or a news feed, or play a video or something.  This will work even while your PC is off provided the device maintains an Internet connection (or so MS says).

There are actually several other new icons in this window, but they were present in XP as well, just located in different places.

Built-In Games

It just wouldn't be Windows without some cheesy built-in games packaged along with the OS.  Vista in this way doesn't disappoint.  Sure you've got the standards like Solitaire, FreeCell, Minesweeper and Spider Solitaire (an addition from XP), but you also have a new 3D Chess game, InkBall and a kids game called Purble Place.

Chess Titans

It's chess, in 3D.  Computer has several difficulty levels.  It's a nice addition to the standard windows games, which are often less than mentally challenging.  Can also be played against a human in hot-seat mode.  Game also tracks various play statistics.

InkBall

Basic concept: Two (or more) colored balls, with corresponding colored holes on a grid with blocks placed to act as obstacles as the balls bounce around.  Your cursor is a "Pen" and you draw links (ink) on the board.  These act as temporary walls which the balls bounce off of.  You draw them at various angles to attempt to guide the right colored ball into the proper hole.  Points awarded for speed. 

Purble Place

A kids game made up of three basic matching sorts of games.  Very cartoony, should keep young tykes amused for at least a little while.

Updated Bundled Applications

On top of the expected bundling of Internet Explorer 7, Vista comes with a number of other utility applications that seems to aim at competing with Mac OS X with its suite of pretty useful, default applications such as iDVD, Mail.app and iCal.  Microsoft answers point-for-point with its rival applications:

• Windows Mail
  This is just Outlook Express all Vista-ified.  Mail comes with some much needed improvements such as junk filters, better search and integration of newsgroups and other community sites.  I can't help but think of Mail.app though when I look at the program, just because it seems Microsoft actually tried to mimic the UI element layout.  It's a solid free mail application that will do the trick for most users
   
• Windows Calendar
  It's iCal... but for Windows.  It basically feels like the calendar element of Microsoft Outlook was stripped and made into its own application.  It has some loose integration with Windows Mail, but it feels klunky and half-baked.  If you need a calendaring tool that integrates with your email, just go out and get Outlook.
   
• Windows Contacts
  Umm... Address Book?  It is starting to seem to me that Microsoft just took Outlook and broke apart each major feature area and spun it as its own application to make themselves look competitive to the Apple application offerings.
   
• Windows DVD Maker
  Do you have a bunch of photographs or home videos on your PC that you would love to hand to friends and relatives to play on their TVs at home?  Then Windows DVD Maker may be the tool for you.  It is a pretty straight-forward tool that most people should be able to figure out.  Seems to be just about as feature-rich as iMovie is for the Mac.  Not a very powerful app though, but what can you expect for free?
   
• Windows Meeting Space
  This is one of the new collaboration tools Microsoft is trying to deploy, working to take market share from companies like WebEx who do online shared desktop tools.  Meeting Space is more designed around users on a local network as opposed to over the Internet, so in reality this is more like the successor to the ancient and feeble Net Meeting application.  You can share individual applications, your entire desktop, distribute virtual handouts, and invite individuals near you to the meeting.  This is perhaps the most polished and potentially useful (in a business environment at least) tool that comes bundled in Vista.
  
   
• Windows Movie Maker
  Ok, this one isn't new, but it has been updated and it looks like it's considerably easier now for home users to make basic video compilations from their favorite media clips.  Basic effects, transitions, titles and credits features are available to spice things up.

There are a few other bundled apps such as Photo Gallery and Defender, but nothing exceptionally special to write home about.  It's been covered before.

That's it for this week.  Check back next Tuesday for Part 4 of the series where we dive into some of the real power user tools hidden beneath the surface of Vista in the Performance & Information Tools.