A Visual Tour Of Windows Vista Beta 2 (50+ Screenshots!) (Page 2)

But the support for the Creative MP3 players is excellent. I am more than happy for it as I possess two Creative Media Players(Creative Zen Sleek which you can see in the screenshot below and the Creative Portable Media Center) that are MTP devices.

Windows Vista detects Creative Zen Sleek:

Windows  detects Creative Zen Sleek MP3 Player

Windows Vista prompts to open the device in Windows Media Player:

Windows Media Player prompts to connect to Creative Zen Sleek MP3 Player

Syncing the audio files between Windows Media Player and Creative Zen Sleek MP3 player is very straightforward. (Though it is deleting all the existing files from the player if I chose the option to “Shuffle” the songs. The name of the option did not properly reflect what it is going to do I thought. I lost 3 files before I could click cancel.)

Windows  Media Player syncs with Creative Zen Sleek MP3 Player

The album art present on the player are shown in the Media Player’s main window. Even an image of Zen Sleek is displayed in the right-pane of the main window!

Showing the album art from the Creative MP3 Player

The next most impressive feature in Windows Vista look is the Sidebar and its Gadgets. Some cool Gadgets are available to be added to the Sidebar(using ‘+’ button at the top) and many more can be downloaded from the Internet once people start creating custom Gadgets.

Adding the Gadgets to the Sidebar

Some Gadgets added to the Sidebar(Number Puzzle/Shuffle Game, Egg Timer, Sticky Notes(my favourite), CPU Meter):

ABC Gadgets added to the Sidebar

Some more Gadgets added(Calculator, Jigsaw Puzzle, Recycle Bin):

ABC Gadgets added to the Sidebar

Next thing in the line is the 3-dimensional view for cycling through the open windows. But before that, let us see how the traditional way of cycling through the open windows(using ALT-TAB repeatedly) has changed in Windows Vista. The following screenshot shows the windows that are currently open:

Open Windows stacked over one another

Now press ALT-TAB to see smaller views of all the open windows at the center of the screen. Huge improvement over the earlier version.

Smaller view of open windows

But the best way is to use the WIN-TAB key to cycle through the open windows in 3-dimensional view(WIN key is the key on the keyboard with the Windows logo printed on it):

3-Dimensional view of open windows

Just as with ALT-TAB, hold the WIN key and keep pressing the TAB key to bring the next window to the front of the stack. If you can’t observe in the sceenshot, if a video is playing in the Media Player, it continues to play while you are cycling through the windows!

Few things that have changed from the earlier version in interesting ways are:

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