Maybe you heard of it, may be you didnt yet.
Windows vista is officialy going to be released worldwide on the 30th of january (today). Vista has been highly improved on several aspects, compared to Windows XP. And if you bought/ordered Vista yet, or if you're planning on, you'll be glad to hear that one of those aspects is gaming :)
Vista contains tons of new features but I picked the most interesting for you (I think) out.



Gaming in Windows Vista

One of the most interesting features for gaming is ofcourse the introduction of DirectX 10. This is an interesting new technique but the majority of the games using this will be released in about 2 years. However though, two games are already announced: Crysis and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.
DirectX 10 basically means better graphics for games using it, games like CS:S wont support it and their graphics wont improve. Atm theres only one graphics card manufacturer that has dx10 cards in the shops: nVidia comes with the 8800GTX and the slightly less 8800GTS.



Better security

Vista comes with a lot better security than Windows XP did.
First of all, users will have to enter a password when they want to perform an action that requires administrator rights. This will make it very less possible for viruses to do damage without you even noticing it (like in XP).
It is possible to encrypt your files now and set a password on it, this is pretty useful for laptop users in case of theft.
Microsoft also introduced a new system called Parental Control, which makes it possible for mum and dad to set the allowed time for their children to be on the computer.



System Assessment Tool

Totally new is the System Assessment Tool, WinSAT.
Before you start your first session in Vista, WinSAT fires up, determines what components are in your pc, and then tests the system to see what it's capable of. It will measure your CPU's performance, your graphics card speed and capabilities, the amount and speed of your system memory and your hard drive's speed and capacity.
WinSAT then assigns a score to each component in your system, varying from 1 to 5, based on the performance of that part compared to the minimum requirements for Vista.
WinSAT automatically tweaks Vista's features and will even disable some if necessary, to accomodate what your hardware can handle.
After the initial analysis, WinSAT will only run when it detects major changes to your system (like a hardware change).WinSAT is also build to detect and solve mysterious slowdowns in your pc.
When Vista detects a slowdown in for example your boot time, the performance monitor will pop up and warn you that it detected the slowdown. It can also tell you that the slowdown occured after the installation of (some)a new app(s). It will then present you with a Windows Defender panel which lets you disable boot-time components of offending apps.
WinSAT:



Vista's new apps

Microsoft's new product comes with some brand new apps.
One of them is Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's answer on the huge popular Firefox.
IE 7 will be one of the first apps using Vista's new Aero Glass interface, you can navigate through your open tabs using a page of thumbnails, which show the content of each tab. Firefox users can get the similar effect using the Reveal extension (can be found on mozilla.com).
Theres also the new sidebar + the gadgets, this is nothing really interesting in my opinion. It is pretty similar to Google Desktop, you can also add gadgets like a clock to the sidebar and system info stuff.
More interesting is maybe the new backup utility.
The one built in Windows XP was pretty bad, designed to work with little backup devices such as floppy disks and CD's.

More yet to come, I have bought it myself today and once I experienced enough with it, I will give you all an update on how it is ;)

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