15. New applications

A blizzard of new applets, utilities and Control Panels

Vista includes Windows Media Player 11, Windows Movie Maker with new effects and HD support, Windows Calendar, DVD Maker, Contacts, Fax and Scan, Disk Defragmenter with scheduled defragging, Windows Easy Transfer, Memory Diagnostics Tool, mildly improved Task Scheduler, and many other smaller tools.

Microsoft is also blurring the distinction between Control Panels and onboard utilities, adding several tools in Vista's Control Panel that are more like stand-alone utilities than settings dialogs. Backup and Restore, Parental Controls, Performance Rating and Tools, and Windows Defender are all new small application-level Control Panels. More conventional Control Panel additions or revisions include AutoPlay configuration, Color Management, Device Manager (which always should have been a Control Panel), Digital Identities (smartcard management), Indexing Options for the integrated search functionality, Mobility Center, Network Center, Network File and Printer Sharing, and Power Options.

Collectively, this spate of new programs, utilities and configuration controls represents the single largest update of bundled software since the Windows 95 time frame. They may sound like bells and whistles -- and on their own, few of these additions are really anything major -- but they're not useless either. Every one of the ones I've called out does something small but useful. In the case of Backup and Restore and Windows Defender, the functionality is a notch above minor. Backup and Restore, for example, is able to do scheduled, automatic backups to optical media or network volumes. It brings Windows' onboard backup utility into the 21st century.