Windows Vista Team Blog

Buy a PC Now, Upgrade to Windows Vista After Launch

TechNet Archive — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:23:00 GMT

Today we're announcing something you've all been waiting for -- information on the upgrade process for those of you who are planning to buy a new PC in the coming months but prior to the Windows Vista launch. Well, now you can have both (and Office to boot)!

Here's the scoop:

PCs loaded with Windows XP or pre-installed with 2003 Microsoft Office software can be upgraded via the Express Upgrade to Windows Vista and Microsoft Office Technology Guarantee program. Express Upgrade will be available to consumers and small businesses from 26 Oct 2006 through 15 March 2007.

Check out the Express Upgrade site for details.

Windows Vista

Windows Vista upgrades may be offered for free or at a discounted price (shipping and handling charges may also apply), so it pays to check with the particular PC manufacturer for details specific to their offer.

Consider looking for "Windows Vista Capable" PCs designated as "Premium Ready," as these PCs are designed to deliver the core Windows Vista experience. PCs carrying only the "Windows Vista Capable" logo may be eligible for the program, but the offer may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Go here for more information about Windows Vista Capable and Premium Ready PCs.

If you purchase a PC running Windows XP this holday, you should remember to take into account the upgrade path of the SKU you purchase. In the US, the upgrade path looks like this (but will vary by region):

Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 --> Windows Vista Home Premium (nominal fee)

Windows XP Professional --> Windows Vista Business (nominal fee)

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition --> Windows Vista Business (nominal fee)

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition --> Windows Vista Business 64 (nominal fee)

Meanwhile, upgrades of this type:

Windows XP Home Edition --> Windows Vista Home Basic

Windows XP Home Edition --> Windows Vista Home Premium

... are both available at 50% discount from the boxed product upgrade price, plus shipping and handling.

Office

You can upgrade to the comparable edition of 2007 Microsoft Office when you purchase a PC pre-installed with qualifying Microsoft Office 2003 software. More details are at the Express Upgrade site.

Boxed Product (FPP)

Similar programs are available region-by-region for upgrading both Microsoft Office 2003 and Windows XP FPP to Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office; your local retailer will have the particulars.

So with this program, you can buy a PC with Windows XP now and upgrade it to Windows Vista once we've launched commercially. How's that for making your purchasing decision a little easier?

Microsoft LifeCam Support Coming for Windows Vista

TechNet Archive — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:26:00 GMT

I've noticed a few discussions out in the community on how Microsoft’s great new LifeCams don’t quite work yet with Windows Vista.

Well, to find out for myself, I just bought the Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 this weekend. I’m happy to say I am currently testing beta drivers for the LifeCams, to which Windows Vista Technical Beta testers also have access to (via Microsoft Connect). No need to worry if you're not part of that program -- drivers are coming full-speed ahead for these neat new webcams which will work very well on Windows Vista.

Have You Seen the Windows Vista Tips and Tricks Website?

TechNet Archive — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:02:00 GMT

Looking for a handy resource for tips and tricks to get the most out of Windows Vista? No need to wait for RTM -- we've provided the Windows Vista Tips and Tricks Website for you to get acquainted with all the resources needed for making Windows Vista run exactly the way you want it. Check it out at the Windows Vista Tips and Tricks Website.

My favorite tip is under the Top 10 Tips and Tricks: #6 is on Windows Meeting Space, which allows two Windows Vista users to create an ad hoc network and share documents or desktops without connecting to the Internet.

What's your favorite tip or trick? Got one that's not listed on the Website? Let me know via the Comments section ...

IE7 for Windows XP Launches Today

TechNet Archive — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 01:55:00 GMT

After lots of late hours and a few pre-release builds, the IE Team is happy (and a bit relieved) to say that the final version of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP has arrived. You can now download IE7 for Windows XP in English from either the IE site or the Windows Download Center. Look for IE7 in other Windows-supported languages over the coming weeks.

We expect millions of customers will upgrade to IE7 because it’s safer and easier. Some e-commerce and financial services companies like Paypal and VeriSign are endorsing IE7 because of its improved security for online transactions.

For those of you who haven’t heard yet, we’re going to start distributing IE7 in English as a high-priority update thru Automatic Updates. If you're an IT professional and have customers who want to manage their internal deployment of IE7, you should recommend they have blocking measures in place by 1 November. We think it’ll take several months to complete the distribution worldwide.

The IE Team still encourages Windows XP users to upgrade to Windows Vista when it becomes available to receive the additional benefits of IE7 in Windows Vista, such as parental controls and Protected Mode. Windows Vista is targeted to be available to volume license customers in November and all other customers in January 2007, although as we’ve said before, the exact delivery date will be driven by the quality of the final product.

And finally, if you run into any glitches with IE7, we’ll be supporting it with free, unlimited phone support for consumers throughout the product life cycle. So upgrade with confidence and let your friends and family know how secure and easy the web can be with IE7.

eWeek Labs Praises Windows Vista’s UAC

TechNet Archive — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:39:00 GMT

eWeek Labs recently took some time to dig deeper into Windows Vista’s User Access Control (UAC), praising Microsoft for their dedication to securing Windows Vista. "With Vista's UAC, Microsoft has finally gotten serious about securing the Windows operating system by limiting a user's rights during day-to-day computer usage," Andrew Garcia from eWeek writes. Andrew also says that UAC "finally brings the Windows operating system up to speed with just about every other major operating system available today."

Check out more of eWeek's findings on UAC.

Whatever happened to… ?

Alex Heaton — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:46:00 GMT

Over the past several months Microsoft has acquired some incredible desktop management technologies including those from Softricity, Winternals, DesktopStandard, and AssetMetrix. Since then, many of you have wanted know how we are going offer these capabilities in a Microsoft solution.

Today we are happy to announce the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance. A desktop management solution designed to complement Windows Vista Enterprise to provide even higher levels of manageability for desktops and software assets.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance includes:

· Microsoft SoftGrid, an application virtualization and streaming solution that can deliver applications to users in seconds, without being locally installed, on any PC they login to. Virtualization also resolves many application compatibility conflicts because each application can run with the version of a supporting file that it needs.

· Microsoft Asset Inventory Services, which analyzes all programs on employee PCs, reducing the labor and guesswork that often stymies attempts to inventory the applications on the PCs within an organization and turns that into intelligent reports and analysis.

· Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management, which provides versioning, history, and rollback of Group Policy settings, along with delegation and role based administration.

· Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset, designed to help IT departments quickly pinpoint the causes of PC troubles, recover lost data, and reduce future downtime with post-crash analysis.

Like Windows Vista Enterprise, Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack will only be available to customers who have PCs covered by Microsoft Software Assurance or a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. This is another example of delivering on our commitment that Software Assurance will continue to provide the most cost-effective and flexible means of managing the Windows desktop.

This pack will be available worldwide in January 2007. For those already planning your Windows Vista deployments in your enterprise, it should reassuring to know that you will have an even richer set of tools available to you to manage those deployed desktops. You can learn more about the Optimization Pack in this article and at http://www.windowsvista.com/optimizeddesktop.

- Alex Heaton

Managing your Photos with Windows Vista

TechNet Archive — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 06:06:00 GMT

I have over 2 years' worth of digital camera photos taken from events and travels -- managing that with Windows XP is next to impossible outside organizing them in folders by date. Windows Vista right out of the box offers incredible ways to manage your digital photos using Windows Photo Gallery -- so I can now organize my photos exactly the way I want.

Import and Fix Your Photos

Windows Photo Gallery gives you full control over your photos. Import your photos from your camera or scanner and "fix" them directly within Windows Photo Gallery. Crop your photos or fix "red-eye" or adjust the coloring. Let’s say I want to crop a picture I took from my recent vacation to Greece:

What if I don’t like the changes I've made to a photo? Windows Photo Gallery allows you to "roll back" to the original file by choosing the "Revert to Original" command. This way you can make sure you adjust your photos to exactly the way you want them, and are free make any and all changes you may wish to, and recover from those changes you don't wish to apply.

Tag Your Photos With Information

Windows Vista allows for extensive file tagging to organize files, and Windows Photo Gallery takes full advantage of this. Add captions to your photos or tag the files themselves very easily in Windows Photo Gallery. All you have to do is click "Info" on the top toolbar after selecting the desired photo to which you’d like to add information.

You can add as many tags as you’d like to any given photo. Here I’ve added three tags. Once you add tags and a caption to your photo, those settings stick with that specific photo in Windows Photo Gallery and throughout Windows Vista. If you browse to that photo in Windows Explorer, Windows Vista’s enhanced shell will display the tags, ratings and captions you've set in Windows Photo Gallery. Tagging your files also provides faster search results for the specific types of photos you’re looking for.

Stay tuned for part 2 of my two-part post on managing your photos with Windows Photo Gallery. In the meantime, you can also check out the Microsoft Photography Blog and get the low-down from the team that brought you Windows Photo Gallery.

Windows Connections 2006: Are you ready for a new day?

TechNet Archive — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 22:58:00 GMT

More news for IT Pros from Alex Heaton:

I wanted to let you know about an upcoming opportunity to get in-depth information on Windows Vista to help IT professionals planning their deployments. The Windows Connections 2006 event is happening November 6-9^th in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is one of many events happening around the world to help business get ready for the arrival of Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office System, and Exchange Server 2007.

This conference will cover:

Keynote presentations from Ron Markezich, Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Managed Solutions at Microsoft; Steve Riley, Senior Security Strategist at Microsoft; and Mark Minasi.
10 Windows Vista Sessions
And 15 demo sessions that cover Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office System, and Exchange Server 2007.

This event is sure to sell out so book now if you want to go. I’ll be providing details about other events happening too.

- Alex Heaton

Visiting Digital Life this Week? Come by the Microsoft Blogger Lounge

TechNet Archive — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 06:11:00 GMT

If you find yourself in New York City this week, perhaps attending Digital Life, I invite you to come by and meet some of the team in person. We're putting on a Blogger Lounge specifically for members of the community who write commentaries of their own, as well as read this blog.

The great thing is that we've scheduled the Lounge to be open all day, with special emphasis on the early morning and late afternoon, so as not to interfere with the show.

Here's the scoop:

Unwind at the
Microsoft Blogger Lounge

New York Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway, New York, NY 10036
Suite 4410

The Lounge is open all day Oct. 12th & 13th
7 a.m. for breakfast postings
4 p.m. for happy hour blogging

Chill before or after a day at Digital Life and post stories in the Blogger Lounge

Savor a cold drink, sink into a bean bag chair, sample some technology and snack away

In the Blogger Lounge you can find:

Wireless access
The newest from Windows Vista & AMD
Logitech gear
Nvidia gaming systems
As always, food and drinks

Drop by!

Virtual PC 2007 Beta: Free and Available Now

TechNet Archive — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 23:15:00 GMT

Alex Heaton has some news to share with Virtual PC 2007 beta that was released today. In his own words....

Virtual PC 2007 Beta is now available as a free download from connect.microsoft.com. Virtual PC 2007 is optimized to work well for Windows Vista as both the host and guest OS. This version works with both 32-bit Vista and 64-bit Vista as the host operating system as well as Windows XP and has improved performance including support for hardware virtualization technologies from AMD and Intel. So now you have an easy way to try out Windows Vista, even if you are reluctant to replace the OS on one your existing PCs; or if you have already taken the plunge you can spin up a legacy operating system in a virtual machine on your Windows Vista machine.

To install Windows Vista in a virtual machine

Dig out your Windows Vista RC DVDs or downloaded ISOs and I’ll show you how to get them up on running using Virtual PC (VPC) 2007.

1. Download VPC 2007 and install it. Start Virtual PC and select New to start the New Virtual Machine Wizard. As you go through the wizard: select Create a virtual machine, specify where you want to store the virtual machine file, select Windows Vista as the operating system, you can keep the default memory, select new virtual hard disk, specify where you want to save the virtual hard disk (you can keep the defaults), and click Finish.

2. In the Virtual PC Console, select the virtual machine you just created, and click Start. Now you are basically booting up a PC with no OS installed, and you need to install Windows Vista onto this virtual image. You should see the follow prompt in your Virtual PC window:

What you do next depends on what type of Windows Vista media you have.

· If you have a DVD, put it into your drive now and press ENTER.

· If you downloaded an ISO, go to the CD menu and choose Capture ISO image. Now browse to and open the Windows Vista ISO.

Now follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation and you’ll have Windows Vista running on Windows XP!

Note: VPC is a great way to experiment with some of the functionality of Windows Vista. But it should not be used to judge the full experience of Windows Vista as some features virtualize better than others. For example, performance of any operating system will typically not be as high in a virtual environment as it would be when running natively. Also note that while you can try out many of the great new features such as user account control, integrated search, the sidebar etc. virtualization technology is not yet suitable for use with 3D graphics so Aero Glass is not available and save the DirectX 10 gaming to your physical PC.

To install Windows XP in a virtual machine

For those not familiar with Virtual PC, it also works the other way around—you can run Windows XP or an earlier OS on Windows Vista. This can be helpful if you have an older application that does not work well in Windows Vista. Follow a similar process to that described above except choose the operating system you want to install, capture the ISO or insert the DVD and you are off and running.

Keep in mind that while Virtual PC 2007 is a completely free program Windows is not. You will need to have a license for any Windows OS that you run in a virtual environment. This is not an issue if you are using beta versions of Windows Vista but in a production environment you need a license. If you use virtual machines a lot and you are an enterprise customer you may consider obtaining Windows Vista Enterprise, which also includes rights to run up to 4 additional copies of Windows in a virtual machine using a technology such as Virtual PC for a single license price.

You can learn more about Virtual PC http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc and Virtual PC Guy's Weblog.

- Alex Heaton