Windows Media Player 11 and Urge

Windows Vista uses the most recent version of Windows Media Player, which is Windows Media Player 11. WMP 11 comes integrated with Urge, the new music store introduced by Microsoft and MTV. In addition to a much more different graphical user interface, the player offers enhanced control over the music library.

Reliability and Performance Monitor

Microsoft has also included a Reliability and Performance Monitor in Vista. This application allows users to see an overview of system resources while in-depth reports can also be seen for the CPU, Hard Disk, and Network. Users can also view hardware failures, software failures, and Windows failures.

Final Thoughts

In this article we intentionally supplied only a general picture of Windows Vista and summarized a number of the new features found in the OS. After reading this preview, we hope that it has given a general picture of the new features of Windows Vista beyond the Aeroglass graphical user interface. Although the new Aeroglass interface is without doubt a major improvement in Windows Vista, looking a little closer at the OS you can see multiple innovations, changes, and improvements.

A more in-depth review of Microsoft Windows Vista will be written by us in the course of the next few weeks in which we will conduct extensive performance testing. In this future article we plan to also analyze the various options provided for portable devices and how Vista affects energy consumption.