Every Flavour Beans

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

Paint application now saves the images in PNG format. I know you are shaking your head in disbelief at this but it is true.

But the Paint application keeps giving errors occassionally for no apparent reason.

Extensions of well known files are hidden even when they are being downloaded from the Internet(more like OS X). For example, .exe files are just called as ‘Applications’.

Whenever a ‘protected’ resource is being accessed you are warned about the required administrator access. You can also run applications explicitly in Administrator mode by selecting “Run As Administrator’ from the context menu.

You can now try to have a look at the previous versions of the folders. I could never see the previous versions successfully though - it always showed the same current view.

Internet Explorer offers to protect from the phishing attempts.

Read RSS feeds right inside the Sidebar Gadget. Remember the videocast of Don Box demonstrating the same more than two years back using the very unstable version of Longhorn? Where is the Blogging Sidebar Gadget by the way? Fine, it got integrated into Office 2007.

Parental Control!! First ‘Media Center’, now parental control. We know who Microsoft is targeting here.

All the installed games have ratings displayed against them(bottom-left of the window). Available game options are visible in the drop-down menu.

You can select whose ratings you trust the most.

If you are a parent whose kids are too fond of playing games, you can recieve the notifications at regular intervals.

If you see a game, among others, that resembles the game of Chess, then you are not mistaken at all. It was a pleasant surprise to see ‘Chess’ being included in default games that come with Windows Vista.

For the beginners, there is help on how to play the game. If only a few popup balloons could have taught the game of Chess.

The board can be rotated in all the 3 dimensions using the right mouse button.

One of the things that I cannot resist is looking at a chess board and not playing a couple of games with it - irrespective of what I might be working on at that time. I played two games in a row - and won both. Don’t ask me what level I played against, I don’t want to prevent you from wrongly guessing that I played against the advanced level.

For the beginners, the visual cues about where a piece can move, whom it can attack etc will be helpful. Seasoned players can turn this off.

I couldn’t find an option to save the played game in any popular notation. There some other interesting games included, especially for the children.

A prompt to update the help files from the Internet.

You can find what else is new in Windows Vista by accessing the Help page(from the Welcome Center).

Now on to some serious stuff.

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