The caching technology in Vista, when paired with Longhorn Server, is improved such that all of these synchronization activities occur in the background. Delta-transmissions mean that only changed data is transmitted, even down to words in a file.

Directories that are available online, but not offline, are enumerated to the client even when offline -- they don't just disappear as they do in current versions of Windows. The client-side cache is encrypted to protect its contents, and the cache is scriptable via a set of APIs, documentation for which will be available by Longhorn Server release time.

Longhorn Server includes better Quality of Service (QoS) support. With QoS, you can ensure the right traffic is prioritized over less important or minimally relevant traffic. QoS is now supported in Group Policy, so you can roll out a consistent set of QoS prioritizations over the network using tools with which you're already familiar.

For search fanatics, indexing and search is much improved. New indexing technology allows for better and more transparency when searching for items either locally or items stored on a file share over the network

Users have a better experience working with Terminal Services on Vista clients. Terminal Services improvements include remote access to an internally-hosted application or resource through a web gateway, making it absolutely simple for users to get the right application every time without navigating in a TS session.