It??™s also the
first version of Windows where you can get Tablet PC and Media Center in
the same package, which means you can use it to build a DVR(Digital Video
Recorder) without a keyboard. And Vista handles videos and pictures much
better than earlier versions of Windows, with improved thumbnail and
metadata support built right into Windows Explorer.
As for the minuses, Vista seems intolerably slow compared with its predecessors,
and its reliability leaves something to be desired. The Green Ribbon
of Death is an everyday occurrence, bringing down Windows Explorer if you
so much as bat your eyes at it. And the horrendously annoying User Access
Control (UAC) prompt forces you to endure repeated prompts for even the
most mundane tasks in Control Panel.
Fortunately, you can deal with most of the minuses. For instance, to tame
UAC, see Chapter 8. Or, to fix the Green Ribbon of Death (or the Blue
Screen of Death for that matter), see Chapter 6. And to make Vista run
faster, check out Chapter 5. But if you want to take stock of what you have
and install the operating system on your PC, then Chapter 1 is for you.
Editions of Vista
Internally, Windows Vista refers to itself as Windows 6.0. When held up
against Windows 2000 (Windows 5.0) or XP (5.1), that means nothing more
than the fact that Microsoft considers Vista to be a major milestone, and the
2 | Chapter 1: Get Started with Windows Vista
basis for its operating systems for the next few years at least.
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