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It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Windows VistaAs you’ll recall, I posted a preliminary version of the Windows Vista Product Guide (also known as “The Book of Windows Vista”) a few weeks ago.  It was in .xps form and initial feedback was very good.  However, in order to view and print the must have information, you needed to install WinFX.  XPS is the XML Paper Specification.  Well, we got some good critical feedback and guess what, we listened. 

Now, you can download this puppy in Microsoft word or XPS format.  Careful though, it’s not your daddies download.  It’s 60MB of rich knowledge transfer.  It’s a comprehensive view of the feature set in Windows Vista.  There are consumer oriented chapters.  There are chapters devoted to the IT Pro feature set.

You’ll need to decide if you are going be eco friendly or not.  Use it in “digital” form or send it to your trusty duplex printer.  Either way, I think you’ll enjoy this guide as you take your journeys to the wonderful world that is Windows Vista.

It’s my understanding this will also be printed and sold in a hard back format.  I think it would make a nice edition in my library.  Maybe I can get Brian or Jim to autograph one for me.  Now that would really be kewl.

UPDATE 5/25/2006:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bbc16ebf-4823-4a12-afe1-5b40b2ad3725&DisplayLang=en contains the links to the .xps and .doc versions.

Enjoy my friends!!!

Comments

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 9:53 AM by Petr

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

The format is very strange, fonts look like very coarse bitmap and the whole document is almost unreadable, at least in Word 2003 and Word XP under Windows XP SP2.

The font used is Segoe but it does not appear in font substitutes list and I also don't know where to get this ttf.

Any idea how to improve the readability of this document?
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 10:12 AM by NEI

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

hoo yeah!!!resumed the download!!
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 11:26 AM by bkchung's WebLog

# Windows Vista 가이드북

http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2006/05/24/429990.aspx
얼마전에 XPS포맷으로 공개되었다가 링크가 내려갔던 그 문서가...
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 1:14 PM by John D

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Hey man, I want to add it to my library too! Think I can get an autograph???
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:51 PM by frankki

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

where do I find the .xps version of this document?
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 4:37 PM by Keith Combs

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Regarding autographs, I can't help you much there.  Regarding an updated .XPS version, I'm checking on that...
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 6:27 PM by Outside The Cube

# Book of Windows Vista...

Keith Combs points to the Book of Windows Vista in this post to his blog (available in Word DOC format).....
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 8:13 PM by Jason Haley

# Interesting Finds: May 24, 2006 PM edition

Wednesday, May 24, 2006 9:05 PM by Pete Dacey

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Just a BIG THANKS to Keith
Thursday, May 25, 2006 8:11 AM by Tux Stallman

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Thanks, it took a few minutes to import into OOo (OpenOffice.org) on SuSE 10.0, but once it was in there I converted it to a PDF and now it's only 17.7MB in size. No problem with the fonts either. And I don't have to be afraid of the recently discovered unpatched vulnerabilities in Word.
Thursday, May 25, 2006 9:14 AM by Anthony

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Thanks!! This is gonna be one useful read!!
Thursday, May 25, 2006 10:39 AM by Matt Hester's WebLog

# Vista Product Guide Revisted

Okay, we are going to try this one again.  One of teammates Keith Combs in the middle of April,...
Thursday, May 25, 2006 12:53 PM by Mike Salvio

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

I liked this better in the other format, it's very compressed in Word and not all the formatting shows up.
Thursday, May 25, 2006 2:31 PM by Pete

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Can you publish this in pdf?
Saturday, May 27, 2006 1:52 PM by Keith Combs

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Regarding creating a .pdf, this isn't something we normally do on microsoft.com.  You could purchase one of the conversion products at adobe.com or try http://createpdf.adobe.com/?v=AFP

Sorry
Sunday, May 28, 2006 11:24 PM by nmercer

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

regarding the fonts in the document, try opening with Word installed on Vista - there is a bunch of fonts used in the doc that aren't in Windows XP
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:17 PM by Syphon

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Could you recommend a good XPS reader/viewer which I could use.  I've searched and supposedly WinFX has one, but I can't seem to find out where it is installed to.

Thanks for the help!
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 7:47 PM by Blog von Kay Giza

# Windows Vista Beta 2 Product Guide [Download]

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 10:15 AM by Keith Combs

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

Regarding the XPS reader, see http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx

The XPSViewer is already installed within Windows Vista Beta 2.  At least it was for me.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006 8:03 PM by Keith Combs

# re: It's back !!! - The Book of Windows Vista - download now

FYI, Under my Windows Vista Beta 2 install, if I double click the .XPS document, it tries to launch Word2007 and fails.

However, if I right mouse click the document and tell it to open with the XPSViewer, it launches IE7 and runs the viewer correctly.
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