CES 2006 Main Show Floor

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CES 2006 Main Show Floor - Part II

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian

Jan. 19, 2006

Specifications

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Microsoft

When we saw Windows Vista demos set up, we had to stop by the Microsoft booth. Though we have read about it and seen screenshots, we wanted to get a little hands-on time with the operating system due out later this year. The new start menu is easier to navigate and less cluttered than before, since it no longer wraps into multiple columns, and it's got a nice quick search feature. One nifty feature is the ability to see what's in an office document in the thumbnail, and you can scale the icons from tiny to huge without a loss in quality.

It wasn't long before we started seeing similarities with Mac OS X, and the ability to create tags, comments and ratings for images to keep things organized is a borrowed idea. Another welcome addition is that when you mouse over a thumbnail image, a larger version of the image will pop up with details about the image, tags associated with it, file size, and resolution. Some of this data, such as the date, is pulled directly from the EXIF information associated with the image. I believe you can optionally set things up so more of the EXIF information is visible such as exposure time and whatnot, which is nifty for photographers. To aid security with Vista, they are making it so the default user is not one with admin privileges. So when you try to do certain things, it will pop up with a dialog box asking you for the admin's password. This is hopefully something that will help get rid of spyware and viruses being installed without your knowledge, registry keys being edited, and so on!

Internet Explorer 7.0 will feature a breakthrough in browsing technology - tabs! Okay, so maybe not a breakthrough! but it's about time MS gets up to date. IE7 does do something we thought was cool though - at the push of a button (I don't know which one!) you can display all of the open tabs in a thumbnail view. Unfortunately they didn't have an active internet connection at the booth at the time, so it just shows loading bars. Vista also implements some parental control features so you can define what content specific users are allowed to view. For example, games with high ESRB ratings won't be accessible to a young child. You can set time limits, block specific programs, and for the nosey parents, you can even view activity logs.

The last thing I want to mention is that Vista has a feature similar to Mac OS X's Exposé. I'm sure there's a keyboard shortcut for it too, but there is a small icon in the bottom left of the screen that you click to activate it, and it shows you all of the open windows. I'm not sure if there are different options for the orientation of the windows, but I like Exposé's way of displaying the windows better so far. The way Vista does it just isn't as effective, most of the windows in the back are totally covered by the ones in the foreground.

And now, a slew of images of some miscellaneous things in Vista.

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Page 1: Introduction / Antec
Page 2: Cooler Master
Page 3: SilverStone Technology
Page 4: Microsoft
Page 5: COWON / SanDisk
Page 6: Dell / Samsung Camera
Page 7: LG / BenQ / Monorail / Conclusion

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