by RabidYak on Wed Feb 22, 2006 5:43 pm
In terms of security, the core of the OS is allot more isolated and protected from the user end of it then in the current generation. Account security is tighter and allows for further access control to system critical stuff, user processes are kept away from system processes, the kernel can only be modifed while running by authorised patches, software-related registry entries at machine level have tighter controls, it has no execute support for CPUs that have it, IE7 can be locked into its own security zone, Defender and a beefed up version of Firewall are fully intigrated and a fair bit of other stuff thats relevant to networks and business rather then consumer users.
Microsoft arn't trying to screw you out of money for a new coat of paint and a couple of new features this time, Vista is about as new as you can get for an operating system based on an existing platform. The really low level stuff like memory management, I/O control and the kernel structure has been overhauled. Video, audio, networking and printing have all been redone from scratch and file management has had allot of feature work done on it. Pretty much all the bundled end user software has either been redone, extended or superseeded by something more comprehensive as well.