This may be the best new application that ships with Windows Vista. It's remarkably easy to use, yet offers surprisingly advanced features, including the ability to send out invitations to meetings directly from within the program, set reminders, create to-dos, and other nice-to-haves. You can create group calendars to share with others who use the same computer, and you can publish your calendar on the Web as well. Best of all is that it's compatible with iCalendar, the main group calendar standard. So when you send or receive invitations, you can automatically sync your calendar with others, and you can subscribe to calendars posted on the Web.

Windows Mail

Outlook Express has been renamed Windows Mail. The interface is cleaner and far more pleasing to the eye, and a new toolbar makes it easier to accomplish common tasks like creating, sending, and replying to mail. But other than that, there's not much different. There's only one surprise here; you can't use Windows Mail to send and receive mail from a Hotmail account, which you can do in Outlook Express.

Backup and Restore Center

Remember the old backup program in XP? It was universally reviled, for good reason. You couldn't do something as simple as backing up to a network folder or a CD drive.