On the desktop when you select properties on "computer" - they took the My Computer naming off.. you will get a nice interface that shows you the Windows Experience Index. It breaks down how your Vista experience will be based on an index that they measure and monitor and where your system might be weak, i.e memory, CPU, Disk IO etc. You will also find Device Manager, Remote Settings, System Settings and Advanced options here. It nice they included your workgroup or domain and computer name options here also, in addition to the network that were all used to.
Also for measuring the bottlnecks, Performance Monitor got some major upgrades. You can select RUN and type perfmon /res to get the new resource monitor that is much easier to read than the old version. There are many more layers to Vista, but they have tried to put the functions you want most within easy reach.
I am also running Office 2007 that has the Ribbon interface and that is really cool! hard to get excited about Office, but its the first program that will actually dynamically build your menus based upon the way you use them most. Its the first Office upgrade that I am excited about, 2003 was ok, but not much different than the XP version.
Yea, this is all getting pretty expensive , thank goodness for MSDN subscriptions!! If I was building out a new machine (and I will be in Jan) I would set it up with Vista Ultimate, Office 2007 Pro Plus, One Care and all on a nice new Core 2 Duo with a min of 2 gigs of ram, a fast current video card with 256 megs of vram and a fast IO Sata Drive. WOW has this all shifted up in the hardware dept fast!
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