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Q: Windows Vista?
A: Windows Vista is Microsoft's next generation operating system, formerly known by its code-name
Longhorn. Originally announced in 2001, and officially unveiled at Microsoft's 2003 developers'
conference, Vista faced numerous delays, with Microsoft scaling back some of its features in order to
help get it out the door within the stated target of 2006.
Windows Vista was released to business costomers on November 30th 2006, and will be released to
consumers in January 2007.
User Account Control (UAC, previously called both User Account Protection or UAP and
Limited User Account ot LUA) gives users only the privileges they need to perform their tasks.
Windows Service Hardening monitors critical Windows services for abnormal activity in the
file system, registry and network that could be used to allow malware to persist on a machine or
propagate to other machines.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista includes many features to help protect against
malicious Web sites and malware, and includes protection against phishing and spoofing attacks.
Network Access Protection. Windows Vista has Network Access Protection to help prevent
security-compromised computers from connecting to a user's internal network until security
criteria (such as the latest updates, security configuration settings or virus signatures
downloaded) are met.
Firewall. Windows Vista provides outgoing as well as incoming filtering, which can be centrally
managed via Group Policy. This lets administrators control which applications are allowed to
communicate or are blocked from communicating on the network.
esku86@msn.com 1
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
My opinion: The "Windows Vista Premium Ready PC" requirements are close to the absolute real
minimum requirements, except that the CPU requirements are too low. A real minimum would probably
be around 2 GHz for a single-core processor, while a dual-core processor could possibly get away with
1.8 GHz.
Q: What is WinFS?
A: WinFS (Windows Future Storage), is a database-based storage engine, based on SQL Server 2005.
This new file system has some capabilities designed to improve searches for certain files on ever
increasing storage media.
esku86@msn.com 2
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Late August 2004, Microsoft announced it would not include the WinFS data storage engine in
Windows Vista, but would ship that technology in beta form by the time Windows Vista will ship. It is
still unclear if WinFS will actually show up any time soon.
esku86@msn.com 3