I use ObjectEdit allot. For making websites to gadget scripting. I have played around with it allot to tweak it to fit my own preference. I've found that using a white on warm black with subtle colours is easier on my eyes. And of course using a shorter tab indent, like 4 spaces. And I have also rewritten quite a few of the syntax files as well to they include more keywords. And I've had to write syntax files for some languages that didn't come by default with OE.

I was wondering what your setup is?

Should we have a OE syntax gallery at WC?

I have uploaded my current set of syntax files for anyone interested.

This is part 4 of a 5 part series offering a look into some of the new features of Windows Vista, slated for release to consumers on January 30th, 2007.  These articles will be posted once per week starting at the end of December and leading up to the commercial launch of Vista. The series so far: Part 1 - Introduction Part 2 - UI Changes & Additions Part 3 - Controls, Apps & Games

Welcome to part four of the Touring Windows Vista series.  Today's piece is about a few of the tools for the power user that have been buried beneath the surface of Windows Vista.  It is the most technical and in-depth of the series and probably contains information about Vista you haven't heard much about yet.  I wish I had more time to fully document these great system diagnostic tools, since there is so much more that can be done and I only scratched the surface.  This is where you'll actually see Vista start to separate itself from XP and 2000, where you'll see some of the technical improvements that have been made in the past 5 years.

Tools for the Power User

Perhaps what is most overlooked when people talk about Vista are the tools it provides the power user looking to get that last ounce of performance out of their system, or to the sysadmin with OCD who simply must know where every bit of his system resources are going.  Vista comes packed with some of the best information tools I've seen on a system without having to fork over a lot of cash.  The generally outstanding quality of the tools though makes it extremely difficult to understand why Microsoft crippled one of the most used system tools... the Disk Defragmenter.

In Windows 2000 and XP, the Defragmenter was a wonderful utility.  It was informative, useful and very effective.  It would give you a little chart showing you how badly your drive was fragmented and a very detailed report of the analysis so you had some idea of whether or not you really needed to defragment.  What do you have in Windows Vista?

That's right... you get NOTHING.  There is no information period available through this tool.  No chart, no report, just something where you can press a button and you're then treated to a "This may take from a few minutes to a few hours" message while it churns away.  No indication of progress.  You just sit and wait... and wait and wait some more.  Normally your system will attempt to do this automatically based on a schedule.  Good for maintaining system health, bad if you're trying to track down a problem.

There is an advanced defrag tool available via the admin command prompt, but it's text only.  You can get your analysis information from this tool however, so I get the feeling I'll rely more heavily on this method.

That brings me to my second annoyance about the power user aspects of Vista.  If you want to run anything from the command line that is even remotely administratively related, you have to do it from the Administrative Command Prompt.  Do you know how to do that?  No?  Well I had to dig in the help files to find out.  To access the Admin Command Prompt, you have to type "command prompt" into the search bar on the Start Menu, and when it shows in the search box, right click on it and select "Run As Administrator".  This combined with the UAC system enabled by default will frustrate power users to no end (UAC is disabled through the User control panel, not the Security Center).  This is one place where I wish Microsoft had borrowed more heavily from Apple and would let users enter administrative mode from any command prompt window.

But annoyances aside, there is a LOT of great stuff hidden under the covers that I wish Microsoft had pushed more.  These are features I never would have found had Brad and GreenReaper not shown them to me.

So travel along with me, as we explore (at a high level) the Performance Information & Tools built into Windows Vista.

First off, you see the now well-known Vista "Score".  Little explanation is given as to why you achieved a certain score, but there it is.  I'm not even sure even what the scale is.  So a 3.6 doesn't tell me a whole lot unless applications start coming out with stickers saying "Runs best on Windows Vista machines with a score of 3 or higher"  But it's still nice having a little bit of benchmarking built-in, and you can compare numbers with your friends for bragging rights.

The meat of the Performance & Information Tools panel is on the left where you'll see a number of "Tasks"

• Manage startup programs
  Remember msconfig from 9x/2k/XP?  Windows Defender has taken on a bit of that role.  This is where you'll turn on and off programs and scripts that kick off when Windows starts up.  This is the first place to look if booting up your box takes too long.  The msconfig tool still exists for people looking for greater control.
   
• Adjust visual effects
  This is mislabeled really, since only the first tab is about the visual effects.  The Visual Effects tab lets you enable and disable a bunch of little visual bits such as drop shadows, animations, the glass effect etc.  This window also offers the Advanced and Data Execution Prevention tabs.  Advanced is where you determine general processor prioritization and virtual memory.  The Data Execution Prevention tab is where you can enable/disable/modify DEP settings, which supposedly protects you from viruses that try and execute code from sections of memory normally reserved for Windows or other common applications.
   
• Adjust indexing options
  Opens the Indexing Options control panel.  Nothing new to see here.
   
• Adjust power settings
  Opens the power settings control panel where you set power behaviors.  Pretty standard from XP.  Nothing new.
   
• Open Disk Cleanup
  Opens the Disk Cleanup utility... This utility looks the same as it did in XP
   
• Advanced Tools
  This is where things start to get interesting.  These are the tools that really let you dive in and see what's going on with your PC at a level you might not have considered before.  Some of these tools are redundant from the main Control Panel view, or even the screen directly prior to this.  Tools we've already discussed are:
   
  • Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows
    This is just "Adjust visual effects
     
  • Open Disk Defragmenter
     
  • Generate a system health report
    Uses some of the data collectors mentioned below in the Reliability & Performance Monitor to give you a very detailed report of how your PC is doing.
     

Lets take a look at a few of the more interesting advanced tools for monitoring and improving system performance.

The New Event Viewer

Most power users remember the Event Viewer from Win9x/2k/XP and how it really didn't give you much information at all, and what it did give you wasn't always useful.  In Vista, the Event Viewer has been pumped up with some serious steroids!  Now you don't just have your standard list of Application, Security System and Internet Explorer.  Now, you have at the top level:

• Custom Views
  Build your own event filter
   
• Windows Logs
  The event logs we all know and love
   
• Application and Services Logs
  Event logs for dozens of individual components of Windows Vista.  You can dig as far down as being able to see events related to the system's Reliability Analysis Engine.  Kernel events are here, diagnostic events, logon service, remote desktop, UAC, you name it and it's probably recorded here.

As you can see by the screenshot above, we've moved into the realm of serious data gathering.  The left column holds all the potential event log filters you may be interested in.  The center has the event list and then the event details below.  The details tab on the lower half of the center panel can give you a more detailed break-down, either in a "friendly mode" or in straight XML, the format all of this information is stored in normally. 

Having the data stored in XML will likely make it much easier for developers to extract and analyze event log data in their own applications. 

Beyond that you have the column on the right.  This is a context-sensitive menu of options depending on what current log you're looking at.  Generally it will let you do the following:

• Open Saved Logs
• Create Custom Views
• Import Custom Views
• Add filters to your current log
• Find events in the current log
• Save events in the custom view

It will also let you inspect events and view properties, and even attach automated system actions to certain events.  Basic tasks are limited to sending an email, launching an application or displaying a message on screen.  This can be helpful if you're trying to track down what specific task may be kicking off an error.  The task created gets added to the Task Scheduler tool if you want to ever go back and edit it.

All-in-all, the new Event Viewer is a GREAT tool for troubleshooting and finally does a good job of giving you access to the information you need.

Reliability and Performance Monitor

This is the real meat-and-potatoes of the advanced system tools in Windows Vista.  This tool gives you diagnostic information on your CPU, Disk, Network and Memory hardware.  It will track what processes are currently causing a read/write to your hard drive, what applications are reaching out to the network and what they're trying to do, as well as a detailed break-down of memory and CPU usage far above and beyond what you've seen in the Task Manager under 2k/XP.

The main view shows you four graphs and four sub-sections on the right main section of the screen.  Each graph and each sub-section correspond to one of your four main system resources: CPU, Disk, Network and Memory.  The subsections expand by clicking on them to give you an even more detailed break-down of what's happening on the chart above.  This is where you'll see which processes are touching your disk, or using your network connection.  The graphs will automatically scale to adapt to your usage levels.  When I took the above screenshot, I wasn't doing anything network intensive.

Digging in deeper, there is the Performance Monitor which will continually graph your overall system performance.  By default it does a line chart of your CPU usage.  You can easily add additional "Counters" for the monitor to track.  I added Disk Write and Disk Read times to mine.  Now I can see how well my disk is doing overall.  You can track just about any parameter of system performance in this view.  Very helpful in seeing if your system being slow is just your imagination, and if it's not, where the slowdown may be occurring.

After the Performance Monitor is the Reliability Monitor.  This will give you a high-level view of a few key metrics that may impact your overall system stability.  It tracks Software Install/Uninstalls, Application Failures, Hardware Failures, Windows Failures and Misc Failures.  It will pull the relevant system event data and make it readily available.  With this information you can track down when your system first started having stability issues, and maybe even track down what is causing it.

Of particular interest to me in this view is the space for hardware failures.  Will Windows Vista be able to detect and properly log major and minor hardware failures?  If so, this will be a huge help to people who find themselves trying to track down bad RAM, or maybe a video card that's about to eat itself.

The rest of the tool is dedicated to all sorts of customizable "Data Collector Sets" where you can have the system track any number of system characteristics.  The amount of detail that can be trapped in these collectors and thus presented in the reports, is staggering.  It will tell you more about your hardware than you were likely to ever want to know, you'll be able to trace exactly what is happening on your system at any given time.  Have an application consistently erroring out?  Fire up a data collector, then open the bad app, once it crashes out, stop the collector and take a look at the report.  You'll get a very detailed look at the state of your system when the crash occurs.

The long and short of the performance tool is that power users, technicians, and even developers will have a lot more power and information at their fingertips when tracking down problems and trying to fix them.  Just knowing what processes are causing your hard drive to grind away will likely make many people very happy.  Gamers looking to eke out that last frame of performance from their games will want to pay VERY close attention to the information this tool gives them.

There are many other little bits and pieces embedded in Windows Vista that will appeal to the power user, tools such as the "Snipping Tool" for grabbing screenshots of only certain portions of the screen.  To find and talk about all of the little bits and pieces though hidden away in Vista though would result in a much longer article than this already is.  For the time being, be content with the immense power provided in the Reliability & Performance Monitor alone. 

That wraps up part four.  Next week, on January 23rd, I'll wrap up the series with a bit of summary and my own concluding thoughts on Vista and what sort of value it presents to the average Windows user. 

Today marks the launch of the WC2k7 website.  The new site is just packed with new stuff as well as improvements to older features.  To make sure everyone gets the most out of the new tools we've included, this article is a brief tutorial familiarizing you with some of the more useful bits.

1.  Breadcrumbs

WinCustomize is big.  I mean really big.  It's kind of mind-boggling when you come to realize just how big it is.  I mean you may think it's a long way down to the corner drugstore, but that's nothing compared to WinCustomize.  The size and complexity can make it daunting to navigate, and under the old system a lot of good content was very hard to find due to how we had areas laid out.  To remedy that we've introduced a "Breadcrumb" navigation feature to all the pages on WinCustomize.  Breadcrumbs are a trail through the site to show you where you are, and the path back "home".  The major benefit here is that sub-categories in galleries, something that was difficult to browse under the old site, is easily accessed now.

For the purpose of demonstration, we're going to use the Icon Packager library:
https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=2

At the top of the page, beneath the main section buttons, you will see the breadcrumbs shown above.  This shows the path from where you are currently, the IconPackager Gallery showing all categories and sorted by last updated date.  This was the same default view you reached when browsing to the IP gallery under the old site.  It also shows you the direct path back to the front page of the site.  Between each section link, there is an arrow.  Each arrow can be clicked on to display a drop-down box showing navigation links relevant to the section name they proceed.

For example, the arrow before "Gallery" has links for "About", "Articles", "Community", "Gallery", "Forums", "Help", "Shop" and "Personal Site".  Essentially, all the other top-level site areas along with Gallery, which you are currently browsing.  If you were to click the arrow directly preceding "Icons" you would see a list of other high-level customization categories such as Cursors, Gadgets & Widgets, Wallpapers, Visual Styles etc.  Always be sure to check the breadcrumbs when you first browse through a gallery, you never know what you might find.

The last two breadcrumbs in the list though are probably some of the most useful improvements to the old system.  They let you quickly drill-down into sub-categories in each library, and also sort the current view by:

Downloads Overall, Downloads Today, Featured Skin, Name, Newest, Ratings, Last Updated

Breadcrumbs are also integrated into the Articles, Help and Shop sections like they are in Gallery.  Any arrow you see between sections can be expanded to show more navigation options than are immediately apparent.  Now you only have information to what you're currently browsing taking up space on your screen, leaving more room for articles, skins and other interesting content.

2.  Search

Search has received a pretty significant change in WC2k7.  Gone is the bulky box on the gallery views with a bunch of check boxes and drop-downs.  It has been replaced with a streamlined, pretty little search field tucked away at the top right corner of the website.  The tricky thing about this new search tool is that it is context-based.  What that means is it will search galleries depending on where on the site you currently are.  Here's an example:

You're at the main page of WinCustomize.com, browsing the news and you decide you want a really well-done Vista Aero look-alike skin for XP.  In the search box you type in "Vista" and hit enter (if you are a Firefox user, at the moment you will have to click on the magnifying glass icon to initiate the search).  The results you receive are ALL items in ALL libraries that match the terms "Vista" in some way.  You'll get WindowBlinds skins, IconPackager packs, wallpapers, cursors, gadgets etc.  The reason for this is because you're searching from a top-level page.

Ok, so that wasn't specific enough for you, but you did get a great set of Vista icons out of the search.  You still want that Aero skin, so you go through the gallery link and work your way quickly to the WindowBlinds gallery.  While you're in the main gallery, you again search for "Vista" and this time you get only WindowBlinds back as results.

So by drilling down into the site, the search bar becomes more and more specific as to what it searches.

(Note: the search bar only searches galleries.  It does not search articles, or forums as they have their own search facilities.)

3.  Personal Sites

Previously a section of the site available only to subscribers, the Personal Sites have been opened to all users with accounts in good-standing (Citizen or higher).  This replaces a number of pages such as MySkins.aspx where skinners could quickly keep track of their submissions to the site without having to have a personal page setup.  Having a personal page gives you your own WC subdomain (yourhandle.wincustomize.com), a guestbook, a favorites and watch-list, a place to showcase what you consider to be the best work on WinCustomize, and a place to put up digital photos and track your stats.

To activate/configure your Personal Page, go the the Settings link below the search bar, and click on the "Personal Site" tab.  On this tab you'll be able to set your site name, any description you want, and build links and link headers.  Items such as your desktop screenshot and personal photo are uploaded through the "Update Images" tab.  All other personal information is updated on the Personal Information tab.

For an example of a configured personal site, see the following user pages:

ZubaZ
Dark-Star

Your personal sites contain a lot of information users might not have been previously aware of.  One of my favorite bits is the Personal Statistics page.  For example, my stats page shows that I am the #2 skin rater on the site, probably due to my moderating submission queues, and that I am the #5 article writer and #3 forum poster.  For skinners, the stats page will also display statistics on your submissions such as number of downloads, rank by library etc.

So that does it for this whirlwind tour of three of the newest additions to WinCustomize 2007.  Is there a new part of the site you're confused about how to use?  Ask away!  I'll write more of these guided tour articles as additional areas requiring explanation are identified. 

This is part 3 of a 5 part series offering a look into some of the new features of Windows Vista, slated for release to consumers on January 30th, 2007.  These articles will be posted once per week starting at the end of December and leading up to the commercial launch of Vista. This week's article was delayed from Tuesday to avoid being lost in the flood of CES news and posts. The series so far: Part 1 - Introduction Part 2 - UI Changes & Additions

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.

In one of Brad's CES articles yesterday he mentioned how Yahoo was showing off Yahoo Messenger for Vista.  I was checking out the preview site and I have to say it looks very impressive.  I was never a big fan of Yahoo Messenger, but this could possibly make me switch.

A couple of the highlights are....

• Use the integrated Yahoo! Messenger Sidebar gadget to keep up with the friends that matter most
• Also add Windows Live™ Messenger friends to your contact list to see when they're online and IM them
• Keep conversations organized by dragging and dropping them into one tabbed window

Read more about it at the site below, and there is also a video preview for you to check out also.

Never let it be said that Bill Gates doesn't know his stuff.  Today at CES I had the opportunity to speak to him on a variety of issues.  His technical knowledge impressed the onlookers as he expertly detailed the transition from 32-bit computing to 64-bit computing and made the distinction between the bit-ness of the computing and the number of bits in addressing.

As some may recall, last year I talked about how users were quickly coming up against the 4 gigabyte limit in Windows XP (really 2 gigabytes as a practical matter).  This has to do with the 32-bit address space in today's 32-bit CPUs. Bill Gates said that is why 64-bit Windows is going to be so important going forward -- 64-bit addressing lets users access a lot more memory "and it'll be awhile before we hit that limit" said Mr. Gates.

Three points Mr. Gates brought up that I found of particular interest were:

1. He "guarantees"  that there will be a major new release of Windows in the next 2 to 4 years. This runs contrary to some of the analysts who have said that Windows Vista will be the last major release of Windows. 
    
2. Windows Vista has helped bring hardware and software together.  Microsoft has made a great effort to work with hardware vendors to make sure Windows Vista and new hardware devices work seamlessly together.  Historically, Microsoft had been at a disadvantage compared to Apple because Microsoft only controls half the platform.  But with Windows Vista, it has teamed up with hardware vendors to create a more seamless experience.
    
3. Microsoft made sure to get ahead of the memory limit curve this time. 32-bit Pentiums were 32-bit in addressing as well. It started the work during the XP time frame and even now, servers are moving to 64-bit platforms (WinCustomize.com runs 64-bit MS SQL Server on an AMD64 box).  The challenge of 64-bit computing right now is getting the driver support. And "Windows Vista is our way of pushing the hardware vendors to strengthen 64-bit support now rather than later."

One other interesting note, besides Mr. Gates being clearly familiar with the in-depth technical aspects of Windows Vista, his switch-over to foundation work in 2008 won't be the end of his involvement at Microsoft.  Mr. Gates explained that after 2008, he will be as involved in Microsoft post-2008 as he is involved with the Foundation today.

I'm here at CES, and even though I'm suffering from a severe case of sensory overload I have managed to stuff a few facts into my brain.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to catch a presentation by Jared Anderson, Microsoft's PowerPoint Project Manager, who gave us a run down on the new stuff in PowerPoint 2007.

I'm not going to focus on the changes in the user interface as that has been discussed in other forums, but rather on the new functionality that PowerPoint 2007 offers. I am not a graphic designer, and PowerPoint has always helped people like me with pretty templates you can use to enhance your presentations. Over time these templates become a little...stale.

In the new version of PowerPoint they have greatly extended and enhanced the ability to make your presentation slick and professional. One of the stand-out features that I saw was the ability to make dynamic 3D text boxes that can be manipulated in a variety of ways so that even non-designers such as myself can add a great deal of visual interest. Not only can these text boxes be made into a variety of shapes and angled in any way you like, but they offer a range of new fill colors and styles (including a cool new gloss that's very much 'in fashion' now).

Other features include:

• New default theme Layouts - very dynamic, new and updated.

• Over a dozen different effects (fill styles change based on effect)

• Six new fonts optimized for on-screen reading

• Text and text box effects - new abilities. I no longer have to go to our graphics team for elements. I can do it myself!

• MUCH easier to import Excel or Word tables because they have the same controls now.

Sadly, all of this leaves room for a whole new style of horrendous PowerPoint presentations. As with all things less is more. Don't go hog wild with every new feature!

 

For More information be sure to visit the Microsoft website: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/preview/programs/powerpoint/highlights.mspx

Ah Las Vegas. Land of gambling and honeymoons.  At least, the latter I assume is what explains the noise coming from the room next door (or there's a lot of torture going on).

I got my CES pass without a problem.  I am a rare breed. I'm a software developer, Microsoft MVP, Featured Community Leader and a journalist all at the same time.  Having gone to these shows now as a software developer and a member of the press now, I can honestly say -- better to be press.  Lots of free goodies.

The Verizon 3G wireless card that I bring with me has continued to save the day.  You'd think that hotels would have nailed wireless access but you'd be wrong. Even in Las Vegas I'm surprised at how difficult it is to find a reliable hotspot. And when you do, it's $10 for 30 minutes.  Meanwhile, the Verizon card has been acting like a champ.

There's been a lot of cool stuff shown to us and I havne't even gotten to the show floor. 

A few highlights:

• Yahoo was showing off their next-generation instant messenger client.  If it ends up half as good as the demo, I'm switching to that.  Made explicitly for Windows Vista, it's slick, it's got great UI, it's powerful, and it looks clean.  In other words, quite unlike most IM clients.
• A big trend at the show is making Windows Vista much easier to deal with hardware.  Microsoft really does seem to have a nice combination with the Xbox360 and Media Center.
• I'm half tempted to get an Xbox 360 just to get to high-def content.
• You already read about Windows Ultimate so I won't go more into detail here.
• ATI showed off a really cool cable card HDTV tuner for Windows Media Center. Look up OCUR on Google to learn more on it.
• And Buffalo showed off a DUAL N wireless router.  Fast enough to stream HDTV content.

Hopefully today I'll get to actually go to the show. I'm in meetings until nearly 3pm PST.

More to come...

Here at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft has been kind enough to take us and a number of administrators of Featured Communities around to a series of labs helping get us a sneak peek at Windows Vista.

As an encore, Microsoft got us a bunch of VIP passes to Bill Gates' keynote address very close to the front row.  Alas, Las Vegas traffic conspired against the shuttle that we were all in and the seats were opened to others and we lost them.  But just when we thought we were going to be stuck in the nosebleed section, PowerUser.TV's Kristin Hatcher came up with another idea -- Hanging out at the Microsoft private suite which, quite unlike the auditorium, had food and drink. Great food and drink in fact.  Kristin was able to persaude Microsoft's community relations team (who have been awesome on this trip) into letting us watch the keynote from there. 

So many of us saw the keynote from the comfort of a quiet private suite eating shrimp, crab legs, and drinking margaritas.  

As Microsoft just announced, one of the first Ultimate Extras (extra features users of Windows Vista Ultimate can download) is a new animated wallpaper feature called "Windows DreamScene".

So what exactly is Windows DreamScene? And what are the extensions and enhancements coming out for it?

Windows DreamScene is an animated wallpaper technology developed by Microsoft that plays high-definition video content as your wallpaper. The key ability of it is that it can do so without using significant amounts of CPU (basically the decoding of the video is the only real CPU use involved).  The animation itself is run through the hardware accelerated DWM.

Software developer Stardock, makers of popular desktop enhancement utilities such as WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectDock, etc. worked with Microsoft on the creation of content and has developed a number of tools to extend the feature set of Windows DreamScene. 

On the content side, Stardock Design created a number of 3D animated content for Microsoft including the default animated Aurora. Microsoft is holding back on releasing all the content they have until Spring 2007.  Stardock also added support for animated wallpapers on its popular WinCustomize.com community site at Dream.WinCustomize.com.

With regards to the additonal tools and enhancements Stardock has released two of them.

The first enhancement is a new program called DeskScapes.  DeskScapes extends DreamScenes to support dynamic content (i.e. videos are pre-rendered).  With dynamic content, you could have your wallpaper change based on weather, time of day, or news.  Or you could just have some cool Direct3D "stuff" that runs (like one of those fish aquariums running as your wallpaper). 

The other key feature of DeskScapes is that it introduces the .DREAM format. This allows artists to protect their artwork.  The .DREAM format supports triggers (changing what is playing based on specific triggers) and it allows creators to insert their author info and a link to their website which we think is crucial to encourage artists to spend the time to create good animated wallpapers.

The other tool Stardock is working on is tentatively called Dream Maker. What it does is make it easy for authors to create .Dream files.  Its goal will be to help make it as easy as possible to create your own animated wallpapers.

To learn more about Windows Vista Ultimate, go to www.windowsultimate.com. To download content to personalize your Windows Vista experience, visit www.wincustomize.com.

Get More Dreams (animated wallpapers): Dream.WinCustomize.Com

Screenshots:

(1) Dyanmic content uses virtually no CPU, it's all on the video card. (2) DreamScene in action. (3) .Dream Files support author info.