Vista day wrap-up
Connecting state and local government leaders
Microsoft Corp. released Windows Vista to the general public today, and has held a series of public events this week to whip up buzz. Last night in Washington, they hosted a black tie gathering at the Kennedy Center, and today agency IT and industry managers packed the Hilton Washington for a day of Microsoft presentations on what to expect with Vista and its kin.
Since the benefits of Vista have already been extensively documented over the past few months, Bill Veghte, corporate vice president for Microsoft North America, largely just recapped the new features at the company's Hilton keynote presentation. The speakers did reveal a few new wrinkles, however:
*Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is in the process of getting its 5015.12 certification for a records repository, noted Cliff Ward, who is a senior technology specialist for Microsoft. This would allow defense agencies to use SharePoint as 'the compliance tool' for records management, he noted. He predicted the software would get approval from the Joint Interoperability Test Command by May.
*One of the chief concerns around the release of Vista has been how well applications that were written for earlier versions of Microsoft Windows would work under Vista. To help in this regard, Microsoft is offering an 'Application Compatibility Toolkit,' noted Rhys Ziemer, Microsoft technology specialist. This feature is actually an online database with details on how many major commercial applications will work with Vista. Problems are noted, as well as tips and patches to get the application running.
*Not surprisingly, the presenters stressed the new security features of Vista. One new feature is easy way to prevent workplace users from downloading data from Vista machines onto key drives, Ziemer noted. Administrators can specify which peripheral devices are allowed to be attached to a computer, in effect allowing them to block copying privileges for key drives.
*You can't call Windows unstable any longer, at least not without some hard data. Ziemer noted that a Vista 'reliability monitor' can keep track of the stability of running applications and drivers. It offers a list of applications and drivers on the OS along with a log of when applications failed, along with more details on each failure. 'You can get all sorts of great information on how the system is running,' Ziemer said.
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