July 19, 2007
Connecting to TV From a Laptop
By J. D. BIERSDORFER
Q. Is it possible to turn my regular TV into a computer monitor so I can watch movies that I downloaded into my laptop?
A. With the proper type of cable to connect the two, it’s certainly possible to pipe the video files you download from the Internet from your laptop computer to your television set.
These days, RCA (also known as composite or phono plugs), S-Video, D.V.I. (digital video interface) and, the latest, H.D.M.I. (high-definition multimedia interface) are among the many types of connectors used between computers and televisions. With so many standards in use, start by inspecting both your laptop and your TV for what connection is offered. To identify what’s back there, Microsoft has an illustrated field guide of common cable connectors at tinyurl.com/87jqd. An easy-to-follow guide can also be found at www.techlore.com/article/10061.
You will find H.D.M.I. ports on new HDTVs, sometimes two or more of them. S-Video is commonly found on many laptops and slightly older TV sets. If you have the S-Video option on both sides, connecting them with an S-Video cable (less than $20 at most electronics stores) is easy. You will probably need to adjust your laptop’s display control panel to send the video image to the TV screen. Video cards, video-card drivers and other settings may complicate matters; check your manual or manufacturer’s Web site for your laptop’s video-out settings and options.
Older laptops and TV sets without S-Video usually have a standard yellow video jack instead, which accepts a video cable with an RCA plug on the end. Most video cables don’t carry the audio signal, though, so unless you have a great sound system on your laptop, you’ll probably want to get audio cables to connect the computer to the TV as well.
Computer and electronics stores offer three-line RCA cables with the yellow video plug and the red and white audio plugs on either end for these situations, as well as S-Video to RCA cables for when you have RCA jacks on one device and S-Video on the other. Gadgets like AVerMedia’s $80 QuickPlay PC-to-TV Converter (aver.com/ppd/quickplay.html) can also simplify matters because they support a variety of video connection types.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Rent Your Cable Box
Rent or Own? The New Cable-TV Dilemma
Soon, Subscribers Will Have
Option to Buy Set-Top Boxes;
Pros and Cons of Cablecards
By COREY BOLES
A generation ago, federal regulators opened the way for consumers to buy telephones rather than rent them from the phone company. Now, the government has its sights on the television set-top boxes that consumers rent from cable or satellite companies.
Beginning July 1, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered cable companies to supply only set-top boxes that can accept a so-called cablecard that slides into the set-top box and determines a customer's level of access to cable service. The change is meant to give consumers nationwide the option of buying their own set-top boxes -- or TVs that can use the cablecard -- rather than renting one.
That new freedom may soon trigger an old question: Is it better to own or rent? On average, cable companies charge $5 a month for a regular set-top box and $7 for one with a built-in digital video recorder, or DVR. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association estimates those costs will increase to $8 and $10, respectively, for a set-top box with a slot for a cablecard.
A standard box with no recording capability, meanwhile, would likely retail for around $130 -- the cost of renting for a little more than a year, according to Ian Olgeirson, a Denver-based cable analyst with SNL Kagan, a market-research company. The price of a DVR that can use a cablecard is expected to be much higher. TiVo Inc. sells a version for $700 but plans a less-expensive model.
RENT OR OWN?
[Rent or Own?]
Factors to consider when weighing whether to rent or buy a set-top TV box:
• It generally costs $5 a month to rent a set-top box and $7 for a DVR.
• A standard set-top box is likely to sell for about $130.
• A DVR to use with any provider is $700 or more, but prices are dropping.
But this buy-or-rent equation has many variables.
Though the FCC imposed a July 1 deadline on the cable industry, few analysts actually expect sudden demand from consumers to buy their own set-top box when that day arrives. Even if they did want to rush out and buy their own box, they may have a hard time finding an electronics store selling one.
Consumer-electronics makers such as LG Electronics Inc. and Panasonic Electronics, a unit of Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., said they don't expect a retail market anytime soon and that they have no plans to start making boxes for the retail market. Panasonic plans to compete with the dominant box makers Motorola Inc. and Scientific Atlantic, a unit of Cisco Systems Inc., to supply boxes to cable companies so they can lease them out to subscribers, but won't be rolling them out directly to consumers. Best Buy Co., the nation's largest dedicated consumer-electronics retailer, says it will stock the devices -- but only if there is evidence of consumer demand.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, meanwhile, says that the agency's goal is to "end up making sure that there is a competitive market for set-top boxes." He says he's counting on consumer demand to light a fire under manufacturers, retailers and cable companies, with the result being a proliferation of affordable devices.
Some new television sets and DVRs already come equipped with cablecard technology built in. Electronics makers and consumer groups, however, complain that cable companies have been reluctant to hand out the cards. Consumers already have bought eight million digital TV sets and high-end DVRs ready to accept cablecards, but only 250,000 households have been able to obtain the cards from their cable companies, according to Jenny Pareti of the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry lobbying group.
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the cable industry's lobbying group, says few customers have requested the cards because they still require a set-top box from the cable company. But the association says it expects demand for cablecards to jump come July.
In addition, set-top box makers have been on the fence. Motorola and Scientific Atlantic control 80% of the market for set-top boxes, and while both say they plan to make set-top boxes available for sale in stores, their biggest priority is maintaining their sales to cable companies -- at least for now.
The real beneficiaries of the FCC's rule change could be TiVo and other DVR makers. Matthew Zinn, general counsel at TiVo, the largest maker of stand-alone DVRs, called the mass-market introduction of cable cards a watershed moment. "The delay has been frustrating, not just to TiVo, but to a lot of other consumer-electronics manufacturers," Mr. Zinn says.
"The stand-alone DVR market has not exactly taken the public by storm," says Mr. Olgeirson of SNL Kagan. He cites the numbers: At the end of 2006, 17 million households had DVRs, nearly 15 million of them rented from a cable or satellite-television provider. "TiVo has struggled with its stand-alone subscribers," he says. "Even after they really reduced their selling price, consumers still chose the integrated boxes from their pay-television provider."
Cable companies for years have fiercely opposed cablecards, arguing that they add complexity and costs but no benefits, while a better technology is just on the horizon. FCC's requirement didn't put an to the grumbling, but it left the cable industry with no choice but to comply with the rule.
The cable industry's "time, money and resources would have been better spent on something like downloadable security that would allow a real competitive marketplace to develop," says Kyle McSlarrow, chief executive of the cable-industry association, referring to next-generation technology to let cable companies set up a subscriber's channels remotely. Mr. McSlarrow complains that cablecards, unlike downloadable technology, aren't interactive so consumers won't be able to use interactive program guides or order movies and other programming using the remote control.
The FCC's Mr. Martin says that after cable operators wouldn't commit to a deadline for introducing the interactive technology, the FCC ran out of patience and set July 1 as a firm date for using cablecards -- as Congress had required more than a decade ago.
Chris Murray, an analyst at Consumers Union, says he is optimistic that the market for stand-alone DVRs will quickly accelerate. "In the early adopter phase, it will be the higher end, more discerning customer, but markets move from early adopter to mass market pretty quickly these days," he says.
DVR manufacturers are betting on that. Digeo Inc. of Kirkland, Wash., announced in January that it is planning in the third quarter to roll out its boxes to the retail market for the first time. Chief Executive Mike Fidler says around 400,000 cable subscribers already rent Digeo boxes through their cable companies, and he is looking forward to selling directly to consumers. "There is a need to stimulate innovation and to open the market up to competition," Mr. Fidler says.
Soon, Subscribers Will Have
Option to Buy Set-Top Boxes;
Pros and Cons of Cablecards
By COREY BOLES
A generation ago, federal regulators opened the way for consumers to buy telephones rather than rent them from the phone company. Now, the government has its sights on the television set-top boxes that consumers rent from cable or satellite companies.
Beginning July 1, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered cable companies to supply only set-top boxes that can accept a so-called cablecard that slides into the set-top box and determines a customer's level of access to cable service. The change is meant to give consumers nationwide the option of buying their own set-top boxes -- or TVs that can use the cablecard -- rather than renting one.
That new freedom may soon trigger an old question: Is it better to own or rent? On average, cable companies charge $5 a month for a regular set-top box and $7 for one with a built-in digital video recorder, or DVR. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association estimates those costs will increase to $8 and $10, respectively, for a set-top box with a slot for a cablecard.
A standard box with no recording capability, meanwhile, would likely retail for around $130 -- the cost of renting for a little more than a year, according to Ian Olgeirson, a Denver-based cable analyst with SNL Kagan, a market-research company. The price of a DVR that can use a cablecard is expected to be much higher. TiVo Inc. sells a version for $700 but plans a less-expensive model.
RENT OR OWN?
[Rent or Own?]
Factors to consider when weighing whether to rent or buy a set-top TV box:
• It generally costs $5 a month to rent a set-top box and $7 for a DVR.
• A standard set-top box is likely to sell for about $130.
• A DVR to use with any provider is $700 or more, but prices are dropping.
But this buy-or-rent equation has many variables.
Though the FCC imposed a July 1 deadline on the cable industry, few analysts actually expect sudden demand from consumers to buy their own set-top box when that day arrives. Even if they did want to rush out and buy their own box, they may have a hard time finding an electronics store selling one.
Consumer-electronics makers such as LG Electronics Inc. and Panasonic Electronics, a unit of Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., said they don't expect a retail market anytime soon and that they have no plans to start making boxes for the retail market. Panasonic plans to compete with the dominant box makers Motorola Inc. and Scientific Atlantic, a unit of Cisco Systems Inc., to supply boxes to cable companies so they can lease them out to subscribers, but won't be rolling them out directly to consumers. Best Buy Co., the nation's largest dedicated consumer-electronics retailer, says it will stock the devices -- but only if there is evidence of consumer demand.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, meanwhile, says that the agency's goal is to "end up making sure that there is a competitive market for set-top boxes." He says he's counting on consumer demand to light a fire under manufacturers, retailers and cable companies, with the result being a proliferation of affordable devices.
Some new television sets and DVRs already come equipped with cablecard technology built in. Electronics makers and consumer groups, however, complain that cable companies have been reluctant to hand out the cards. Consumers already have bought eight million digital TV sets and high-end DVRs ready to accept cablecards, but only 250,000 households have been able to obtain the cards from their cable companies, according to Jenny Pareti of the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry lobbying group.
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the cable industry's lobbying group, says few customers have requested the cards because they still require a set-top box from the cable company. But the association says it expects demand for cablecards to jump come July.
In addition, set-top box makers have been on the fence. Motorola and Scientific Atlantic control 80% of the market for set-top boxes, and while both say they plan to make set-top boxes available for sale in stores, their biggest priority is maintaining their sales to cable companies -- at least for now.
The real beneficiaries of the FCC's rule change could be TiVo and other DVR makers. Matthew Zinn, general counsel at TiVo, the largest maker of stand-alone DVRs, called the mass-market introduction of cable cards a watershed moment. "The delay has been frustrating, not just to TiVo, but to a lot of other consumer-electronics manufacturers," Mr. Zinn says.
"The stand-alone DVR market has not exactly taken the public by storm," says Mr. Olgeirson of SNL Kagan. He cites the numbers: At the end of 2006, 17 million households had DVRs, nearly 15 million of them rented from a cable or satellite-television provider. "TiVo has struggled with its stand-alone subscribers," he says. "Even after they really reduced their selling price, consumers still chose the integrated boxes from their pay-television provider."
Cable companies for years have fiercely opposed cablecards, arguing that they add complexity and costs but no benefits, while a better technology is just on the horizon. FCC's requirement didn't put an to the grumbling, but it left the cable industry with no choice but to comply with the rule.
The cable industry's "time, money and resources would have been better spent on something like downloadable security that would allow a real competitive marketplace to develop," says Kyle McSlarrow, chief executive of the cable-industry association, referring to next-generation technology to let cable companies set up a subscriber's channels remotely. Mr. McSlarrow complains that cablecards, unlike downloadable technology, aren't interactive so consumers won't be able to use interactive program guides or order movies and other programming using the remote control.
The FCC's Mr. Martin says that after cable operators wouldn't commit to a deadline for introducing the interactive technology, the FCC ran out of patience and set July 1 as a firm date for using cablecards -- as Congress had required more than a decade ago.
Chris Murray, an analyst at Consumers Union, says he is optimistic that the market for stand-alone DVRs will quickly accelerate. "In the early adopter phase, it will be the higher end, more discerning customer, but markets move from early adopter to mass market pretty quickly these days," he says.
DVR manufacturers are betting on that. Digeo Inc. of Kirkland, Wash., announced in January that it is planning in the third quarter to roll out its boxes to the retail market for the first time. Chief Executive Mike Fidler says around 400,000 cable subscribers already rent Digeo boxes through their cable companies, and he is looking forward to selling directly to consumers. "There is a need to stimulate innovation and to open the market up to competition," Mr. Fidler says.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Recording From Your TV To A PC
Recording TV on the Computer
Q. Is it possible to plug in a TV cable to my computer and use it like a VCR to record programs?
A. In most cases, you just need a TV tuner card for the computer and a program to do the recording. Some TV tuner cards are designed for installation inside the computer and some are external boxes that connect through a Mac or a PC’s U.S.B. port. Both provide the jacks to connect a coaxial cable or antenna to the computer so you can pipe in the programming.
Several companies sell TV cards, including Hauppauge (hauppauge.com) and AverMedia (www.aver.com/multimedia.html), and you can find many more around the Web. Some cards include their own recording software, but programs like SnapStream’s Beyond TV (www.snapstream.com) give TiVo-like powers to your Windows PC. You can also buy the Beyond TV software bundled with a compatible TV tuner card if you haven’t made the hardware purchase yet.
Some TV recording software includes onscreen program guides that let you easily select the shows you want to record, and a few can also handle high-definition content, so shop around. Extra features, like the ability to easily burn shows to DVD or export them to versions that play on a portable video player, are also becoming common.
ADS Technologies (www.adstech.com) has a number of internal and external TV recorders and Elgato Systems (www.elgato.com) offers the EyeTV 250, an external tuner box and recording software, for Macs running OS X.
If you plan to record a lot, you might want to consider adding an external hard drive to the mix to hold all of your programs, as high-quality video files can be rather large. For example, a guide on SnapStream’s site (www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/faq.asp) estimates that five hours of recorded video at the “good quality” MPEG-2 setting needs 10 gigabytes of space — and just one hour of HDTV can eat the same amount of hard drive real estate.
Q. Is it possible to plug in a TV cable to my computer and use it like a VCR to record programs?
A. In most cases, you just need a TV tuner card for the computer and a program to do the recording. Some TV tuner cards are designed for installation inside the computer and some are external boxes that connect through a Mac or a PC’s U.S.B. port. Both provide the jacks to connect a coaxial cable or antenna to the computer so you can pipe in the programming.
Several companies sell TV cards, including Hauppauge (hauppauge.com) and AverMedia (www.aver.com/multimedia.html), and you can find many more around the Web. Some cards include their own recording software, but programs like SnapStream’s Beyond TV (www.snapstream.com) give TiVo-like powers to your Windows PC. You can also buy the Beyond TV software bundled with a compatible TV tuner card if you haven’t made the hardware purchase yet.
Some TV recording software includes onscreen program guides that let you easily select the shows you want to record, and a few can also handle high-definition content, so shop around. Extra features, like the ability to easily burn shows to DVD or export them to versions that play on a portable video player, are also becoming common.
ADS Technologies (www.adstech.com) has a number of internal and external TV recorders and Elgato Systems (www.elgato.com) offers the EyeTV 250, an external tuner box and recording software, for Macs running OS X.
If you plan to record a lot, you might want to consider adding an external hard drive to the mix to hold all of your programs, as high-quality video files can be rather large. For example, a guide on SnapStream’s site (www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/faq.asp) estimates that five hours of recorded video at the “good quality” MPEG-2 setting needs 10 gigabytes of space — and just one hour of HDTV can eat the same amount of hard drive real estate.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
A Short History of (Bit)Torrent
These articles kind of tell the torrent story.
The birth of Bittorent (2004) ... Bram lives off the hundreds of dollars that grateful Bittorrent users send him each day.
Bram starts to make peace with Hollywood (2006) ...he's threatened with lawsuits so he makes nice with the movie makers..
Bram is hired by Hollywood (2007) ... he takes Hollywood's money. Actually he's positioning himself nicely for the future.
The suits in Hollywood don't understand the difference between Bittorrent the brand owned by Bram Cohen, and Bittorent the torrent protocol that many other software developers use to create file sharing clients. They think that by threatening and eventually co-opting Bram and Bittorrent they would put an end to torrents.
The birth of Bittorent (2004) ... Bram lives off the hundreds of dollars that grateful Bittorrent users send him each day.
Bram starts to make peace with Hollywood (2006) ...he's threatened with lawsuits so he makes nice with the movie makers..
Bram is hired by Hollywood (2007) ... he takes Hollywood's money. Actually he's positioning himself nicely for the future.
The suits in Hollywood don't understand the difference between Bittorrent the brand owned by Bram Cohen, and Bittorent the torrent protocol that many other software developers use to create file sharing clients. They think that by threatening and eventually co-opting Bram and Bittorrent they would put an end to torrents.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Vista Upgrade Review
Personal Technology
January 18, 2007Vista: Worthy, Largely Unexciting
By Walter S. Mossberg
A new version of Microsoft Windows, the world's most popular and important computer operating system, will finally arrive for consumers on Jan. 30. It has taken the giant software maker more than five years to replace Windows XP with this new version, called Windows Vista -- an eternity by computer-industry reckoning. Many of the boldest plans for Vista were discarded in that lengthy process, and what's left is a worthy, but largely unexciting, product.
Vista is much prettier than previous versions of Windows. Its icons look better, windows have translucent borders, and items in the taskbar and in folders can display little previews of what they contain. Security is supposedly vastly better; there are some new free, included programs; and fast, universal search is now built in. There are hundreds of other, smaller, improvements and additions throughout the system, including parental controls and even a slicker version of Solitaire.
 |
| Vista's Flip 3D feature lets you scroll through images of currently running programs. The sidebar (right) contains miniapplications. The Windows Photo Gallery (left) is for organizing and editing photos. |
After months of testing Vista on multiple computers, new and old, I believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced. However, while navigation has been improved, Vista isn't a breakthrough in ease of use. Overall, it works pretty much the same way as Windows XP. Windows hasn't been given nearly as radical an overhaul as Microsoft just applied to its other big product, Office.
Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple's operating system, called Mac OS X, which came out in 2001 and received its last major upgrade in 2005. And Apple is about to leap ahead again with a new version of OS X, called Leopard, due this spring.
There are some big downsides to this new version of Windows. To get the full benefits of Vista, especially the new look and user interface, which is called Aero, you will need a hefty new computer, or a hefty one that you purchased fairly recently. The vast majority of existing Windows PCs won't be able to use all of Vista's features without major hardware upgrades. They will be able to run only a stripped-down version, and even then may run very slowly.
In fact, in my tests, some elements of Vista could be maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers.
Also, despite Vista's claimed security improvements, you will still have to run, and keep updating, security programs, which can be annoying and burdensome. Microsoft has thrown in one such program free, but you will have to buy at least one more. That means that, while Vista has eased some of the burden on users imposed by the Windows security crisis, it will still force you to spend more time managing the computer than I believe people should have to devote.
Here's a quick guide to the highlights of the new operating system.
Versions and UpgradingVista comes in six versions, two of which are primarily aimed at consumers. One, called Home Premium, is the one most consumers will want. It contains the full Aero interface, and it includes the functionality of Windows Media Center and Windows Tablet edition, which have been discontinued as separate products. Home Premium costs $239, or $159 if you are upgrading from an earlier version of Windows. It will come preloaded on most midrange and some high-end consumer PCs.
The other main consumer edition of Vista is the stripped-down version, called Home Basic. It includes the improved security and search but leaves out the new Aero interface and the Media Center and Tablet functions. It will be preloaded on low-price PCs. Home Basic will cost $199, or $100 for upgraders.
A third version, called Ultimate, will wrap up everything in Home Premium with some additional features from the business versions of Vista. This is for power users, and it is likely to be preloaded on high-end PCs. But some regular users may need Vista Ultimate if their companies have particular network configurations that make it impossible to connect to the company network from home with Home Basic or Home Premium. Vista Ultimate will cost $399, or $259 as an upgrade.
Even if you buy the Home Premium or Ultimate editions, Vista will revert to the Basic features if it detects that your machine is too wimpy to run the new user interface.
For most users who want Vista, I strongly recommend buying a new PC with the new operating system preloaded. I wouldn't even consider trying to upgrade a computer older than 18 months, and even some of them may be unsuitable candidates. Microsoft offers a free, downloadable Upgrade Advisor program that can tell you how ready your XP machine is. It's available at: microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upgradeadvisor.
If you bought a PC in the past few months, and it had a "Vista Capable" sticker on it, it should be able to run at least Home Basic. If it was labeled "Premium Ready," it should be able to handle Premium and probably Ultimate.
Microsoft says that Home Basic can run on a PC with half a gigabyte of memory and that Premium and Ultimate will work on a PC with one gigabyte of memory. I strongly advise doubling those numbers. To get all the features of Vista, you should have two gigabytes of memory, far more than most people own.
Even more important is your graphics card, a component most people know little about. Home Basic can run on almost any graphics system. But Premium and Ultimate will need a powerful, modern graphics system to run well.
PerformanceI tested Vista on three computers. On a new, top-of-the-line Hewlett-Packard laptop, with Vista preinstalled, it worked smoothly and quickly. It was a pleasure.
On a three-year-old H-P desktop, a Vista upgrade installed itself fine. But even though this computer had a full gigabyte of memory and what was once a high-end graphics card, Vista Ultimate reverted to the Basic user interface. And even then, it ran so slowly and unsteadily as to make the PC essentially unusable.
The third machine was a new, small Dell XPS M1210 laptop. In general, Vista ran smoothly and well on this Dell, but some operations were annoyingly slow, including creating a new message in the built-in Windows Mail program. This surprised me, because the Dell had two gigabytes of memory and a fast processor.
SecurityMicrosoft says Vista is much more secure than any other operating system. But this is hard to prove, especially at the beginning of its life, when few hackers and malefactors have access to it. One visible security feature asks for your permission before you do potentially dangerous tasks, like installing new software. This is a good thing, and it's been on the Macintosh for years. But unlike the Mac version, the Vista version of this permission feature doesn't necessarily require you to type in a password, so a stranger or a child using your PC could grant permission for something you yourself might not allow.
Vista also has built-in parental controls so you can restrict what a child can do on the computer. This is also already on the Macintosh, though the Vista controls are more elaborate.
Microsoft includes a free antispyware program in Vista, called Windows Defender. But PC Magazine regards it as inferior to paid programs like Spy Sweeper and Spy Doctor. So you may want to buy one of these. You should also buy an antivirus program, which isn't included.
User InterfaceThe new Aero interface is lovely, and it makes using a PC more pleasant and efficient. It apes some elements on the Macintosh but retains a distinct look and feel. Icons of folders look three dimensional, and they pop. Most file icons are thumbnails that show a tiny preview of the underlying document.
 |
| Like the rest of Vista, the Start Menu has a prettier, more refined look. |
The old hourglass icon that appeared during delays has been replaced by a gleaming, spinning blue circle. The cutesy names for standard folders, like "My Pictures," have been changed to simpler ones, like "Pictures."
As on the Mac, you can now drag favorite folders into a list at the left of open windows, so it's easy to get to them.
A new feature called Flip 3D shows a 3D view of all the programs you're running and lets you scroll through them. It's like the Mac's excellent Exposé feature, though not quite as handy.
Another new feature, called the Sidebar, is a vertical strip at the side of the screen that can contain tiny programs, called Gadgets, displaying things like favorite photos, news headlines, stock prices and the weather. Once again, this is awfully similar to a Macintosh feature called Dashboard, which displays tiny programs called Widgets.
Some familiar Windows features have new names. The old Display control panel, where you chose screen savers and desktop pictures, is now called Personalization. The Add or Remove Programs control panel is now called Programs and Features.
SearchLike the Mac, Windows now has rapid, universal, built-in search, a very welcome thing. The main search box is contained at the bottom of the Start menu, and it works well. Other search boxes appear in every open window.
You can also save searches as virtual folders, which will keep collecting files that meet your search criteria. This is another feature introduced earlier by Apple.
Built-In ProgramsThe Outlook Express email program has been given a face-lift and renamed Windows Mail. But it's pretty much the same, except for a new junk-mail filter. The Windows Address Book has been renamed Windows Contacts and, oddly, turned into a sort of file folder.
The latest version of the Internet Explorer Web browser, with tabbed browsing, is included, though it's also available for Windows XP.
As on the Mac, Windows now has a nice, centralized Calendar program. And there's a new photo-organizing program, Windows Photo Gallery, but it's inferior to Apple's iPhoto because it doesn't allow you to create photo books, or add music to slide shows. There's also a pretty rudimentary DVD-burning program.
The familiar WordPad program can no longer open Microsoft Word files (ironically, Apple's free built-in word processor does).
Gradually, all Windows computers will be Vista computers, and that's a good thing, if only for security reasons. But you may want to keep your older Windows XP box around awhile longer, until you can afford new hardware that can handle Vista.
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