IE 7.0 includes an easy way to subscribe to news feeds, regularly updated information that sites publish in the format known as Really Simple Syndication (RSS). When a surfer visits a site that publishes one or more news feeds, a square broadcast icon on IE 7’s toolbar changes from grey to orange. Clicking the icon takes you to a page that explains the content of a feed and provides a clickable link that subscribes you. This is a big improvement over previous news feed buttons in other browsers, which formerly displayed raw XML code when clicked. After you’ve subscribed to a news feed, you can read it using IE 7’s Favorites pane. This subwindow is accessed by clicking the yellow star in IE’s toolbar and selecting Feeds. The latest news items can be sorted by date or title or filtered by categories provided by the author of the feed. IE’s native feed handling isn’t as capable as a dedicated reader’s, such as NewsGator, or an online news aggregator’s, such as Bloglines.com. But the addition of RSS support in IE is certain to make this form of communications popular with a much larger chunk of Internet users than had discovered news feeds prior to Vista.

There’s No Support in IE 7 for Secure RSS - Windows Vista

Unfortunately, IE 7.0 shipped without built-in handling for secure news feeds. These are feeds that users can access only by providing a username and password. (For additional security, such feeds may also be encrypted before being sent across the Internet.) This lack of support means companies can’t use RSS to deliver information privately to authorized employees who use IE. Also, publishers can’t use RSS to distribute premium content to paying subscribers who use IE. Dedicated news aggregators, such as NewsGator, do allow users to enter a username and password to subscribe to secure RSS feeds. You only need to do this once; the aggregator securely stores your password and periodically uses it to access and download the info you requested. Sources within the IE development team tell us that support for secure RSS was left out of IE 7.0 to keep the project on schedule, but that it’s a high priority for release as an upgrade. Watch for a download that will add this feature to IE.

Encrypt Entire Drives with BitLocker - Windows Vista

Screaming headlines in recent years have made the public aware of stolen laptops and desktop computers that contained the personal records of thousands of millions of individuals. These thefts might not have exposed anyone’s personal data if the hard drives in the stolen computers had been encrypted and protected by strong passwords. Various third-party solutions have long been available to encrypt sensitive data folders and entire hard drives. With Vista, Microsoft now enters this market with BitLocker Drive Encryption. BitLocker has some advantages over competing encryption products because, integrated as it is into Windows, it can check the integrity of a computer system before the Windows user interface is ever loaded. BitLocker can tell when a hard drive has been moved to a different computer—as would be the case if a drive had been stolen—and can defend against brute-force attacks. BitLocker also integrates with Microsoft’s Active Directory domain service scheme. The remote storage of digital keys that can unlock or restore data if a user forgets a password is a difficult and labor-intensive chore for IT administratrors. BitLocker handles this by using Active Directory to escrow the keys securely, while still being able to help an authorized (but forgetful) user access crucial data that’s stored in a password-protected drive. BitLocker is available only in Vista Ultimate Edition, which can be purchased separately or upgraded to from the Home and Business Editions, and Vista Enterprise Edition, which can be purchased separately or upgraded to from the Business Edition.

Use Easy Transfer to a New PC - Windows Vista

Moving all of your old files and templates from one PC to another—not to mention duplicating all of the settings and preferences that you spent hours perfecting in your old copy of Windows—has been a royal pain for years. Microsoft provides a better solution to this problem with its Easy Transfer utility in Vista. The program accepts files and preferences from Windows 2000 and Windows XP machines, as well as machines running Vista. You can select just data files to transfer to the new PC or transfer entire clumps of e-mail messages and contacts, Internet settings, and complete user accounts as well. No information is deleted from the old PC, so you have plenty of time to confirm that the data has been transferred correctly before erasing anything on your obsolete system. The transfer requires that you install an Easy Transfer program from Vista to the older computer. Also, both the new system and the old one must be capable of exchanging data through one of the following methods: _ A local area network _ A USB Flash drive or external hard drive _ Recordable CDs or DVDs

Don’t Pay Big Bucks for a Cable

As far as we can tell, an Easy Transfer Cable is just a USB printer cable with a computerstyle connector on both ends and firmware in the middle that helps Vista recognize the cable as a Plug-and-Play device. We’ve seen such cables advertised for $45 USD. Connecting the Ethernet ports of both machines—using a crossover patch cable (about $6 at Radio Shack) to create a simple 2-PC local area network—seems like a cheaper and faster alternative. You may still need the Easy Transfer program, but that should be a simple download.

Parental Controls Windows Vista

Vista adds a new Control Panel applet to the mix: Parental Controls. Assuming that you’re the first person to password-protect this feature, you can ostensibly dictate the times that other users can log onto the PC, the ratings of the games they may play, the names of any programs they are prohibited from running, and the nature of the web sites they can surf. We say ostensibly, because this is exactly the kind of feature that every teenager in the world will be looking for a way to hack around. For one thing, gaining access to the master password gives any user the ability to change the restrictions at will. When the master password is set, the responsible adult is asked by Microsoft to also set a password hint. Most adults, fearing they might forget the password, will set a reminder such as my date of birth. This hint, as implemented by Microsoft, is visible to anyone using the system. Thanks, Dad, now I can adjust the parental controls any way I like. The Parental Controls system might be useful if you’d like to kick your kids off your home PC at, say, 9:00 p.m. so you can surf the Web without competition. We’re not sure it’s foolproof even for that, however.

Windows Vista - Don’t Assume Too Much

If you think Parental Controls on your home PC are going to effectively bar your kids from seeing whatever they want on the Internet, you’re fooling yourself. The average teenager has access to dozens of PCs that you don’t control—even cell phones can download web content today. You’re better off training your kids what not to install from the Web, like free offers that actually contain spyware. That’s a much bigger threat to your household’s security than uncensored Internet access itself poses. That old standby, Solitaire, for example, is much improved. Not only are the cards more crisp and vivid than ever before, when you move a card from one pile to another, the exposed card turns itself over in a smooth animated effect. Right-clicking an eligible card moves it to the home position. And, if you have many eligible cards (such as when you’ve succeeded in placing all the cards in columns), right-clicking the green felt background of the game moves all the cards home. All of the new Vista games benefit from enlarging their windows to full-screen. Watch closely when you do this, and you can actually see the objects in a game become richer and more realistic when they have more pixels to render themselves.