It’s my favorite feature too

November 8, 2006 By

Ed Bott says that his favorite feature is the new rewritten audio engine in Windows Vista (although he focuses on the visual interface). That was done by Steve Ball’s team (which Larry Osterman, one of my favorite developers I met while at Microsoft, is on).

Second favorite feature? The rewritten networking stack. You’ll never see a good review of it, but the networking performance is a lot better. All that plumbing work will pay off bigtime when we all start throwing HD video files around our networks at home.

Third favorite feature? The security enhancements. I hope never to hear that something bad happened cause Windows’ security isn’t up to par.

What’s your favorite feature?

Filed Under: 1
  • Paul
    Robert, I've watched a few of the new videos (they're great) and I also saw a bunch of your Channel 9 work. But watching video is like switching into a different mode (or mood) and I guess I'd like to see more of that content in your blog since on most days I only have time to go through my RSS feeds. If I start watching videos, I am usually transported out of productivity into videoland for unaccountable hours:) But I know the video blogging IS your job now.
  • My favorite feature would be how it is overpriced, delivered late and underperforms compared to the original design goals.

    Vista rates a big meh for me.
  • Ryan
    There are just so many "little" things that make it worthwhile--easier connecting to a projector, power management flexibility (not to mention $aving$ in electricity!), vastly improved monitoring and logging tools, more drivers are in user-mode (particularly video drivers), better printing and printer management, etc. etc., of course in addition to the new networking and audio stacks.

    That said, we're pretty excited about the deployment speed and options. The resolution-independent display ability will be quite beneficial to our older users and those with poor vision. We implemented non-admin privileges on our machines a long time ago (perhaps the biggest single security present you can give to your machines! Not a single issue since...), so UAC is not a big selling point for us--but it will be for our users at home. DX10 will be a big deal for gamers (I'm not much of one). Lots of great stuff!

    All that said, probably the favorite "feature" for us is that, despite the multitude of changes and new features, hardware and app compat are looking pretty darn good right now--a lot better than when 2000 came out.
  • It really isn't necessary to upgrade to vista from XP if your happy, then again the same has been true for every new Animal in OSX, but if you happen to like computers, then it's a different story.
  • My favorite part? The bashing and the supposed theory it'll make everyone drive to Mac or Linux...
  • Diego
    “I hope never to hear that something bad happened cause Windows’ security isn’t up to par.”

    OK everyone. Remember this blog post so that you can link back to it when something bad happens to someone because of Windows' security. :)

    Never say never. :)
  • Brian Shapiro
    The visual style in Vista just makes Windows much more pleasant to use on a day to day basis, its not just eye candy.

    But actually I just really like the explorer interface with the breadcrumb bar and the new common dialogs. I'm not one of those who is crying over no up button :)
  • Paul: WTF? Have you missed the past two months of work over at http://www.scobleshow.com ? It's pretty obvious you haven't watched a single video if you think I'm over-focusing on Microsoft.

    Here, go watch this one anytime you think I'm in bed with Microsoft: http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/12...

    Or this one:
    http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/11...
  • Paul
    Robert are you still the Microsoft Geek Blogger, or do you work for Podtech, or is the MS thing so ingrained in your DNA that you can't let go of it? I was hoping you might branch out a bit more from MS (maybe just not talk about it at all since they get so much attention as it is, why do it?). It would be much more interesting if you focused on your new realm rather than your past realm.
  • Jason
    For what it's worth - performance has been improved so much, as an OS, that I"m running a release candidate image on an early Pentium 4 (1.7 Ghz?) and 512 Mb. It's very fast, until I compile something in which memory usage / Processor speed is maxed out.

    Tom - it isn't a necessary feature, at least until XP support runs out.
  • Oh, Tom, you're the guy who told me that OS7 wasn't any better than OS6, right? Or that NT wasn't any better than 3.11, right? Or that XP wasn't a necessary upgrade over Windows ME, right?

    Yeah, you're right. None of this stuff is necessary. Unless you need the better networking performance. The improved memory usage. The better audio performance and features. The better video features. More security. Etc.

    Nah, you definitely aren't a guy who could use any of that. You're right.
  • My favorite feature thus far is that it doesn't appear to be a necessary update. Given its cost, that's an excellent feature.
  • Jason
    Maybe I'm just into eye-candy, but the Aero interface is my favorite so far. Makes life much more usable. Being able to see which app I'm entering by hovering over the taskbar or using Flip 3D. Since I'm on XP SP2 for now, I am using TaskSwitchXP.

    if you haven't seen that (and you're on XP), give it a shot. It's a nice preview.
  • blogger@wordpress
    The ability to turn off the sound from select applications using the volume control from the system tray.
  • "I hope never to hear that something bad happened cause Windows’ security isn’t up to par."

    Hopefully it will at least take longer than the 24 hours it took to find a security exploit in IE7 when it was released.
  • There are so much new features in Windows Vista that it's really hard to tell which one is the best. Maybe "Previous versions", simple and it does the thing that you expected.
blog comments powered by Disqus