It's not just Photo Gallery, either. Even the Windows Explorer folder window does a very good job of previewing images. (And it has no trouble generating .BMP thumbnails, either -- go figure.) It can also initiate slide shows, network sharing and DVD recording. The feature that makes this possible is the fast icon image scaling, which creates useful previews for many file types. Knowing a lot more about what's in a file or folder before you open it is big advantage of Windows Vista.
13. Smart little things
Microsoft has put a lot of time and attention into many little things in Windows Vista. Over the years, I've learned that tiny little usability tweaks -- not major new features -- tend to please experienced software users. Here are just a few examples:
A. Installing drivers is never a fun experience in Windows, and hardware installation wizards have been anything but wise over the years. Windows Vista's hardware installation is smart enough to differentiate among .INF files and look in multiple subdirectories. That means it can search for the right drive installer in a large directory housing a large collection of subdirectories, each with drivers for different hardware, and find the correct one and install it automatically. I can remember wishing for this more than 10 years ago. The feature doesn't even require Vista-class drivers.
My Lenovo notebooks all came with a driver subdirectory hanging off the root containing driver installers for all the components that shipped with the system. (Would that all computers followed this practice instead of placing them on a CD, which half the time expects to install all your drivers as part of a batch process.) Even though Windows Vista installs on these Lenovo notebooks with six separate hardware items in Device Manager showing the driver wasn't installed, it's a breeze to install them. Just right-click each yellow icon in Device Manager in turn and choose the Reinstall Driver option. For each, direct the installation wizard to the top level of the Lenovo driver directory and click the "Include subfolders" option. Windows does the rest. It also remembers the target directory, and you can back through the wizard after each driver installs to save steps.