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VISTA
PREVIEW
To Work Together Better
Vista Secret
When multiple instances
of an application are
grouped into a single
taskbar button, clicking
the button and then
mousing over individual
instances of the application
previews each app
window independently.
WINDOWS
COLLABORATION Walk
into a meeting and Windows
will help you work
with other participants,
sharing applications and
information.
WINDOWS CALENDAR
Finally, a simple calendar
app right in the OS.
It’s not terribly sophisticated,
but it’s a very
welcome addition.
WITH ITS ROOTS IN DESKTOP
operating systems and applications,
Microsoft hasn’t always
been first to recognize
the importance of networking
and collaboration. Vista,
though, makes some significant strides in this area,
with several new features built in. The changes extend
all the way from the low-level TCP/IP stack to
the application level. Vista even includes—at last!—
a simple calendar application that lets you schedule
meetings with others.
The feature I’m most excited about here is Windows
Collaboration. Now, when you walk into
a meeting room (or café) full of other notebooktoting
users, Windows gives you an easy way to
work collaboratively. Windows Collaboration provides
an impressively seamless way to share applications
and supporting files ad hoc among a small
group of other Vista users. Vista is supposed to let
Wi-Fi–enabled notebooks establish a peer-to-peer
network in spots that lack Wi-Fi infrastructure or
even an Internet connection.
When you launch it,
Win dows Collaboration
asks if you’d like it to enable
file synchronization
automatically and set up
the required Windows
Firewall exceptions. You
then have an opportunity
to start a new collaboration
session or join an existing
one. Choose people
to invite—via e-mail
or a file share—and set
a password. Invitees just
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open the invitation and enter the password, and you
all then find yourselves in a shared workspace. You
can share individual application windows or files,
transfer control to other users, and instant-message
other participants.
Vista also includes a Network Projection feature
that lets you connect to networked LCD projectors,
which are becoming more commonplace, either by
entering a specific known address or by browsing
the LAN for suitable devices.
In general, I like Vista’s simplified facilities for
configuring and browsing networks. The new Network
Center applet in the Control Panel provides
a one-stop overview of all your network settings.
Vista’s network map automatically discovers and
displays various devices on your network. And I was
psyched to find that Vista maintains multiple network
profiles (no more reconfiguring network settings
manually every time I visit a different office),
simplifies connection to wireless networks, and provides
additional network-troubleshooting tools. Vista
also simplifies common tasks such as file sharing.
There’s more below the surface. Vista’s “People
Near Me” API gives developers a suite of tools to
help build peer-to-peer applications that can automatically
identify people who are physically nearby
on the network. Similarly, a Network Awareness API
lets applications detect when a PC starts using a
different connection—and behave appropriately.
And Microsoft has largely rewritten the operating
system’s TCP/IP stack; among other improvements,
it directly supports IPv6 and enables it by default.
As in Windows XP, Microsoft will include different
sets of networking features in different editions
of Windows. Remote Desktop, for example, will be
available in the Vista Business, Vista Enterprise,
and Vista Ultimate editions, but not in the Home
editions.
Calendar applications might not seem all that exciting
or important—until you need to schedule a
meeting between various members of a work team
or a family. Windows Calendar’s interface will be
familiar to Outlook calendar users. The app lets
you create appointments, including all-day and recurring
appointments, and specify reminders with
variable lead times. You can invite other users to a
meeting via e-mail, publish a calendar to a WebDAV
server to share it over the Internet, and subscribe to
other users’ published calendars. Windows Calendar
(nominally) supports multiple time zones and task
tracking. It’s not a substitute for Outlook—it can’t
sync with mobile devices, for example—but it does
support the iCalendar calendar-sharing format and
certainly should fulfill casual users’ appointmenttracking
needs.—John Clyman
78 PC MAGAZINE MAY 9, 2006