Venu Anuganti Blog

Larry Osterman posted in his blog what changes were made to the audio for Vista. Here is the few list of improvements:

• Entire audio stack has been moved from kernel into the user mode, to reduce the amount of code that runs in the kernel
• Changes to the infrastructure to support pro-audio apps, to have better audio quality (Larry will update us on this very soon, stay tuned to his blog)
• Totally revamped UI for audio, Sndvol32 and mmsys.cpl were completely rewritten to include new, higher quality visuals, and to focus on the common tasks that users actually need to do. (we have to wait till BETA2 to see the new UI)
  

In a side note, I found an issue (not really as this is BETA ) while playing songs with the Real Player on Vista. The player picks the default volumn when the track changes or when the next song is played even when you adjust the volumn in the middle of the song. It seems it picks the volumn level when it loads. But you dont see that in XP or 2003. You can observe the bahaviour from this low quality AVI video file.

Yet another Yahoo! product which is not fully compatible on Vista after Yahoo! mail and Yahoo! Music Engine, which is nothing but the worlds popular Yahoo! messenger itself. Yahoo! messenger is not fully working on Vista Beta1.

Even though I installed Yahoo! messenger version 7,0,0,426 few days back when I tested Yahoo! music engine on Vista, today I thought of using it on Vista when my XP is used to create a DVD.

I started Messenger and signed in; after signin, I get a blank screen as in this screen shot. That means I could not identify the list of friends who are online now. The messenger allows me to perform all operations to browse and check stock quotes, news and other things.

The messenger also hungs during the signout or trying to play a song from Yahoo! music Launcast and I needed to kill it (YPager.exe) from the Task manager. Atleast now, Yahoo! should seriously consider the compatibility of its products under Vista, else it might loose the base to Google or MSN, whos products does seem to work fine on Vista.

If you are thinking too much about the hardware requirements to deploy Vista (especially RAM and GPU), the Microsoft Vista Hardware Guidance posted very recently should help.

If you want Glassy look of Vista, must go for the vendors listed from the same article, which supports Windows Vista Display Driver Model (formerly known as LDDM), else Windows XP-comparable desktop graphics experience will be provided. Currently Intel, ATI and NVidea has LDDM supported GPUs.

Did we know that the Vista OS has the new mail client called “Windows Mail” ? I too did not notice it until today till I watched the video on channel 9.

If you are excited to know how does this look and what features it offer … hmmm … do not worry…channel9 has the answer … becuase Windows Mail is nothing but the renamed version of Outlook Express … hmmmm …. and thats not all.

Watch the video on Channel 9 to know more about Windows Mail.

Microsoft has unveiled several major new security features of the Longhorn Server, which is due in 2007. Here are the few:

• New security features planned will include an automatic patch check and a file system that can fix itself on the fly (”self healing“).

  And this server promises a lot to the customers who are in the edge of moving to Linux (or using it ) just for the sake of security holes from the Windows Operating system series. I am sure, if this clicks, most of the Linux users might migrate back to Windows due to its UI, application compatibility, ease of use and lot many to list that every one knows.

• The “secure-at-install” feature is designed to help secure new installations of specific server roles. When a new server is installed as a terminal server or file server, for example, the system will automatically find and apply security updates that apply to a particular role.
• New transactional capabilities in the Windows file system and registry will let administrators more easily roll back any changes in case of an error
• Another security feature planned for the Longhorn server release is Network Access Protection (NAP). This feature, originally planned for Windows Server 2003 R2, lets users perform a “health check” on PCs connecting to their network and block clients that don’t meet rules — for example, for patches and virus signatures. Windows Server 2003 R2 is an interim Windows Server release that is due by year’s end
  

Also, Longhorn server OS is broken down to smaller components or modules; at its core, the server will contain no graphical user interface and boot directly to a command prompt.

News source: Yahoo! News
[submitted by Kris]

Microsoft redesigned the Vista home page with lots of new information. It also provided the PDC05 screenshot gallery where in you can find cool screen shots of Vista, office 12, IE7, Digital Locker, Workflow and Expression (MAX is missing though).

Also, just happen to check Windows Vista UX Guidelines available for download from Vista Download center from Microsoft. This is a preliminary draft of the Microsoft Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines. These guidelines contain information on What’s New in Windows Vista, design principles, guidelines for controls, text, windows, and aesthetics. They will help designers and developers create high quality, consistent Windows Vista applications.

You can also find a white paper on How to build a great Windows Vista app from here.

Jeremy Mazner, Longhorn Technical Evangelist posted in his blog about how to build apps that will run like a dream on new Vista OS release.

Here is a nice white paper on Lighting Up on Windows Vista. According to Jeremy “this article adds some technical background and documenation. If you’re looking for a good quick answer to the question “is there anything new or interesting in Windows Vista?”, this is a pretty good place to start getting answers; and that answers most of the basic questions for Vista app developers“