44 MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 2007
Media Center is
encumbered with tons
of unpleasant DRM, it
automatically deletes
some recordings after
a few weeks, and it’s
not the most intui-
tive 10-foot interface.
But the new version
of Media Center is
built into Vista Home
Premium and Ultimate,
so it’s tough to argue
with free.MEDIA CENTER
the potential negative impact of acciden-
tally installing malware is much reduced.
On XP, once you install one bad app,
you’ve opened the gates to dozens of
others. The bad app can (and will) install
other malware applications, which will do
the same thing in turn. Just a few hours
after installing a simple weather-monitor-
ing utility, your system could be infested
with dozens of types of spyware and mal-
ware, rendering it unusable.
In Vista, even if you install one piece
of malware, you’ll be prompted before
the installer can write to the Program
Files directory. Once the install is done
and the app runs, it will be running at a
lower permission level, without access
to C:/Program Files/. When it tries to
install new malware, it will actually save
those apps in a sub-folder of your Profi le
(C:/Users/username/Appdata/Local/
VirtualStore). So the worst-case scenario
is that while your user profi le will be
infected, your system won’t be.
Vista contains some other nifty
security tricks. Certain high-risk
applications— Internet Explorer and
Messenger are two—run at an even
lower permission level than your other
apps. They’re explicitly prohibited from
writing to any areas that aren’t neces-
sary for their operation. So even if an
exploit infects IE, the infected applica-
tion won’t be able to do anything.
There are some compatibility problems
with the new security measures—when
you make changes this drastic, there are
bound to be—but Vista looks like it will be
a signifi cant improvement to XP.TELEMETRY
Another huge potential improvement to
Vista is its integrated telemetry. Built intothe new OS are tools that measure the
time it takes your rig to perform common
tasks. Everything from the time it takes
to boot your PC to the launch time of
your browser are constantly tracked. The
idea is that whenever something causes
Vista’s performance to nosedive, you’ll
be able to pinpoint a new application or
driver as the culprit, and fi x the problem
immediately. The OS also tracks crashes,
so if your machine starts to show behav-
iors that could indicate a larger problem,
you will hopefully get an early warning.
The Performance and Reliability track-
ing system isn’t perfect. It doesn’t seem
to discern the difference between serious
application crashes—say a printer driver
repeatedly crashing—and less signifi cant
crashes, such as a media player that
chokes on a bad fi le. However, any extra
tools to help troubleshoot PC problems
are certainly welcome!AERO GLASS
We’ve already talked ad nauseum about
Vista’s new interface. Now that the
video drivers are maturing, we’re going
to say that it’s pretty awesome—espe-
cially for users with multiple displays.
The new Aero Glass GUI works with
most any graphics card that supports
Direct3D 9 pixel shaders; we’ve tested it
with everything back to a Radeon 9500,
with decent results.
What’s the hard benefi t? Accelerated
video is rendered directly to the screen’s
frame buffer; Vista doesn’t use kludgey
overlays that cause tearing and can’t
be moved easily. In addition, because
the new renderer was created from the
ground up to work with multiple dis-
plays, 3D acceleration and video play-back both work on your secondary and
even tertiary screens.MOBILITY CENTER
For years, our favorite laptop manufac-
turers have integrated all the power-
consumption and road-warrior options
in one handy control panel. With Vista,
that functionality is part of the package.
Adjust everything from your screen’s
brightness, to your Wi-Fi card’s status, to
the display you’re using, from one handy
Windows control panel.
Vista also improves the low-power
modes supported by most PCs. Instead
of separate Suspend and Hibernate
modes, Vista includes one hybrid Sleep
mode. When the PC fi rst goes to Sleep,
it will drop to whatever Suspend mode it
supports. Then, after a specifi ed period
of time, Windows will automatically
Hibernate, just the way you’d expect it
to. When you return to your PC, it will
boot up in much less time than it would
from a cold restart.WHIZ-BANG FEATURES
One of our major complaints about
Vista is its lack of bling. Transparent
window edges are cool, but they’re not
sexy. While we’d like to see a little more
Minority Report-style badass interface
design, Vista isn’t completely devoid of
whiz-bang features. It has the Sidebar,
a Konfabulator clone, complete with
a wide selection of available widgets
to tell you everything from the current
weather outside to the launch date of the
Nintendo Wii in Europe.
Then there’s the secondary SideShow
LCD. We’ve already seen a couple of lap-
top prototypes that sport small external
screens. Vista is able to display Sidebar
gadgets on that screen, even if the PC
is in standby mode. We haven’t had an
opportunity to test the technology yet,
but we expect to see the fi rst SideShow-
enabled laptops shipping in January, and
we’ll give you the full details then.DIRECTX 10 GAMING
We dedicated an entire feature this
month to DirectX 10 gaming (see page
26), so we won’t repeat too much here.
Suffi ce it to say, the only place you’ll be
able to play DirectX 10 games in their
full glory is on Vista. Games will work
on XP in fallback DirectX 9 modes, but
eventually, all gamers are going to be
forced to upgrade to the new OS.