A couple application highlights in Vista

Of the new applications in Vista, there are a couple of stand-outs.

First is Internet Explorer 7. The most significant leap in IE technology is implemented in Protected Mode and the Mandatory Integrity Control (MIC). MIC is a security feature of Vista that carries the concept of least priviledge over to applications and processes. When IE7 is run in Protected Mode, it is assigned the Integrity Access Level of “Low.” This protects the system and the registry from writes by malware you may have stumbled upon while surfing the `net.

This is a quantum leap in internet security from the practice of loging on as an Administrator and running your processes with that status.

The other application that I really enjoy is Windows Meeting Space. This is a great tool for collaboration, and you don’t have to break the budget to implement this in your workplace, since it’s included in Windows. Not only is it great for remote participation where you can’t physically get together, but it’s also great for when everyone is around the same conference table. In this scenario, you can all share documents, suggest changes, etc. It’s much better than having the meeting, emailing the file out the the participants afterward, and having a slew of revisions come back to you. You almost need another meeting to discuss everyone’s revisions. With meeting space this is avoidable. That should increase productivity.