• Illustration: Windows Photo Gallery

Vista continues a trend, started in previous versions of Windows, of adding new tools and applications for consumers, including a digital photo organizer and parental controls. In combination with Vista's other advances in areas such as security and mobility, these features serve as valuable consumer marketing tools and make Windows more competitive with Apple's OS X. However, some of Vista's new tools compete with existing applications from ISVs, while others could be replaced by online services or new desktop clients that link to those services.

Specifically for Consumers

Most of Vista's advances are relevant to both businesses and consumers, such as new security tools (e.g., the improved security model in User Account Control and the Defender antispyware tool), the Internet Explorer (IE) 7 Web browser, and tools to ease certain mobile computing tasks (such as synchronizing offline data changes when reconnecting to a network). However, the OS includes some new tools and applications that are specifically designed for consumers.

In aggregate, these features are meant to make Vista noticeably different—and hopefully better—than Windows XP, as well as making it more competitive with Apple's OS X, which has undergone several revisions during the five years that elapsed between XP and Vista. These consumer features can serve as effective marketing vehicles, giving Microsoft demonstration material for trade shows and retailers. They also provide some insight into Microsoft's overall direction in the consumer space—in particular, some Vista consumer features could benefit from deeper ties to Windows Live services, which is likely the reason that Windows and Windows Live development have been consolidated into a single division.

Digital Media

Vista includes numerous improvements that will help users create and use digital audio and video—digital media—including new versions of the Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, and Media Center interface (available only in Vista Home Premium and Ultimate), as well as a new DVD Maker application for transferring videos or photo slide shows to DVDs.

However, some of the built-in Vista applications—particularly DVD Maker—fall far short of Apple's iLife equivalents, and Microsoft has not included any equivalent to Apple's Garage Band music recording application. Microsoft may try to close the gap by releasing improvements to these applications separately from Windows releases, as it has done with Movie Maker in the past.

(For detailed coverage of Vista's digital media tools, see "Digital Media Advances in Vista" on page 17 of the Apr. 2007 Update.)

Photo Gallery

A new tool called the Windows Photo Gallery gives users a set of tools for working with digital photos, providing a useful alternative to the software bundled by most digital camera makers, which can vary widely in functionality and ease of use.

Essentially a stripped-down version of Microsoft's Digital Image Suite software, Photo Gallery allows users to import photos from a digital camera with a single click, view them with various tools (e.g., zoom, pan), perform simple editing tasks (such as removing redeye), create slide shows, and configure a photo printer or send a photo to an online partner for printing. Photo Gallery also has tools to track pictures—users can tag photos at any time using the Info Pane tool, then run searches against these tags or other file properties (e.g., date taken) using Vista's built-in search pane, which appears on the Start menu and in Windows Explorer. (For an illustration, see "Windows Photo Gallery".)

While Photo Gallery lacks the advanced editing features of stand-alone consumer software, such as Microsoft's Digital Image products or Adobe's Photoshop Elements, it will probably serve the needs of most casual digital photographers and therefore might cut into some sales of these products at the low end of the market. Sales of these products could also be reduced if camera makers elect to rely on Photo Gallery instead of bundling Vista-compatible third-party applications.

Parental Controls

A new Parental Controls feature available from the Internet Controls panel allows parents (acting as administrators) to set restrictions for children (or other users) and receive detailed reports of their activities. This feature could also help some businesses control employee activity, although Parental Controls are disabled on any PC connected to a domain. While Vista's Parental Controls might ease concerns about Internet safety and exposure to inappropriate content (including offline content, such as violent video games), it will place pressure on ISVs that sell parental control software, such as ContentWatch's Net Nanny and SurfControl's CyberPatrol.

The Parental Controls panel lets administrators define time limits and specific times of day that other users may use the PC, restrict games based on their rating (many game ratings systems are supported, including the Entertainment Software Ratings System in North America), and prevent them from running any application installed on the PC. It also allows administrators to restrict other users' Web activities, such as limiting visits to a predefined set of URLs (a "white list"), blocking them from visiting sites in certain categories, such as pornography and drugs (these "blacklisted" sites are categorized and regularly updated by Microsoft), and preventing them from downloading software. Parents can also receive detailed reports of other users' activities, including logon and logoff times, applications opened and used, Web sites visited, and e-mails and instant messages sent and received.

Parental Controls isn't intended as a complete substitute for parental attention. Some features don't work with third-party software—for example, Firefox doesn't support download blocking, and games that the system doesn't recognize cannot be blocked. In addition, parents must choose administrative passwords that are difficult to guess and give their children limited user accounts, or children can easily bypass the system.

E-Mail, Calendar, and Contacts

Vista includes minor updates to Windows' built-in e-mail application, a new calendar application, and an updated contacts store. However, these tools seem incomplete—in particular, they lack tight integration with Microsoft's corresponding online services. In early 2006, Microsoft moved Windows and Windows Live development into the same product group, led by Senior Vice President Steve Sinofsky, in order to spur such integration. Consequently, the future of these tools is somewhat uncertain: they may be updated to become better integrated with Microsoft's online services, or they may be replaced by free, downloadable Windows Live clients that boast such integration.

Windows Mail. The latest version of Outlook Express, which was introduced as part of Windows 98, has been rebranded Windows Mail. It offers improvements such as e-mail search (using Vista's built-in search technology), spellchecking, junk mail filtering, auto-detection and flagging of likely "phishing" e-mails, and a new storage engine that promises better performance.

One important feature of Outlook Express has been removed from Windows Mail: the ability to connect to Hotmail accounts. At the same time, Microsoft is beta-testing a free, downloadable e-mail client, currently named Windows Live Mail Desktop, which includes all of the improvements in Windows Mail, as well as support for Hotmail accounts and an RSS reader. The new client also includes a pane that displays contextual advertisements purchased by Windows Live advertisers. In all likelihood, once Windows Live Mail Desktop emerges from beta, Microsoft will concentrate future development on it (and Outlook) and limit Windows Mail development to bug fixes. Future versions of Windows might ship with the Windows Live e-mail client preinstalled.

Windows Calendar. Vista allows users to create a personal calendar to keep track of appointments and tasks. Calendars can be shared with other user accounts on the same PC and can be published to any Web site that accepts the common iCalendar format; the Windows Calendar can also be used to view any online calendar that stores data in that format.

Windows Calendar currently has no connection to Windows Live sites, probably because the most logical node for integration, Hotmail's online calendar, does not support the iCalendar standard. However, Hotmail is in the midst of a major redesign, and better integration between the two products is likely once this redesign is complete (expected later in 2007).

Although it is possible to save Outlook 2007 calendars as iCalendar files and then import them into Windows Calendar, there's little useful integration between the two calendars. For instance, changes cannot be automatically synchronized, nor is it possible to view them side-by-side in the same window.

Windows Contacts. An updated version of the Windows Address Book, Windows Contacts lets users store contact information, such as names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and pictures, in a top-level folder accessible from the Vista Start menu. While Windows Mail uses this contacts list—for instance, when typing an e-mail, users can choose a contact from Windows Contacts—Outlook uses a completely separate contacts store, and exchanging records between the programs is a multistep manual process.

Windows Contacts may eventually be integrated with the Windows Live Contacts service, which provides a single address book for Windows Live services such as Hotmail, Messenger, and Spaces (e.g., users can limit viewing of their Spaces blog to members of their contacts list).

Resources

Microsoft's Windows Vista site, which includes a feature-by-feature walkthrough, is www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista.

Detailed coverage of Vista's features for businesses, including security and mobility advances, is in the Dec. 2006 Research Report, "Windows Vista: Benefits for Business."

Windows Live Mail Desktop is covered in "Desktop Client for Windows Live Mail" on page 24 of the Apr. 2006 Update and "Mail Client to Include Search, Ads" on page 35 of the July 2006 Update.

For an overview of Windows Live services and strategy, see "Understanding Windows Live" on page 35 of the June 2006 Update.