Windows Vista Ultimate
If you use the same computer at home and for your daily work, Windows Vista Ultimate is an excellent choice. You can smoothly shift between the things you want to do and the things you need to do. For fun, you'll love the extensive options you get for music, images, live and recorded TV, and online entertainment. For work, you'll find improved document sharing and networking support. If your PC is a laptop, you'll appreciate how easily you can manage and extend your battery life. And you'll get the most advanced, layered security protection of any Windows release yet.
Easier
See what you're doing, find what you need
The first things you'll notice about Windows Vista Ultimate are its elegant looks and how it helps you with essential tasks. It's easier to work with and visualize your information with Windows Aero. You can conveniently arrange and manage your open windows using Windows Flip and Flip 3D. And you won't have to click to see your content because live taskbar thumbnails reveal it.
Every day you have to hit the ground running at full speed. Now, with Instant Search, you have a faster way to find whatever you need on your PC, on your network, or on the Internet. Whether you're looking for an e-mail from a colleague, a picture of your mom, a spreadsheet from last quarter, or the website for your kid's homework, you only need to start typing in the Search box on the Start menu.
It's easier and faster to find anything, no matter where you may have saved it, with the consistent, streamlined menus, toolbars, and preview panes in the improved Explorers in Windows Vista. Explorers include Search boxes too, so you can search within a particular type of information, such as all your documents.
You can organize your files any way that you want and immediately sort and filter information based on file type, saved date, or the name of the file creator. Watch this demo to see how Windows Vista helps you find and organize information.
Back up without fuss, roll back file changes
If you've used a PC for long, chances are good that you know the sick feeling you get in your stomach after you've accidentally deleted a picture or a document you spent hours writing. And you know you can avoid that feeling by routinely backing up your files. But you can find yourself procrastinating because it seems like it will take a lot of time and trouble.
Now you can avoid the procrastination because you can easily use the Windows Backup and Restore Center. If you want to back up just your files and data, you can choose Automatic Backup. Or you can choose Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore, which can get your entire PC back to normal in one easy step if you experience a catastrophic hardware failure.
The Backup and Restore Center makes this essential task simple to do.
What do you do if you've made a lot of changes to a document and realize you want to go back to a previous version? In the past, you had only the version you'd most recently saved. Now, Shadow Copy automatically creates and archives copies of your files as you work on them. So if you accidentally saved over a document or a document becomes corrupted, you can easily retrieve any previous version of that file.
Use multiple languages
Windows Vista Ultimate is available in 35 languages—simultaneously. If you have a multilingual household or are learning a new language, you can install as many languages as you want and even switch between them as easily as logging off and back on again. And if your family shares a single PC, each family member can use his or her preferred language to interact with the PC.
Easily fax and scan
Once in a while you might need to send or receive a fax or scan a document or image. You have flexible, integrated faxing and scanning capabilities in one convenient location with Windows Fax and Scan. For faxing, you don't need a fax machine. And if you have a locally connected or network-connected scanner, you can scan documents and images with a single click.
If being an IT support person isn't your idea of fun, you can relax. For one thing, you can get up and running fast using Windows Easy Transfer to automatically copy your files, photos, music, e-mail, and settings from your old PC to your new Windows Vista–based PC.
After your computer is set up, you will be pleased that system disruptions are kept to a minimum with little or no effort on your part. Built-in diagnostics alert you to disk failure, defective memory, and other potential issues so they can be resolved before affecting your everyday tasks.
Behind the scenes, new self-healing technology can automatically identify and fix problems as they occur. And your system's performance is more consistent with Windows SuperFetch, which tracks when you use programs and ensures that you have faster access to them.
Share the fun and enjoy it on the go
Your mom is turning 75 in a couple of months. She insists that she doesn't need any more stuff. So what can you do for a gift? She recently spent a week with you and you got some great photos and videos of her with your kids. You can easily create a photo slide show and burn it to a professional-looking video DVD with Windows DVD Maker. Then you'll all have a great time watching it on her DVD player at her party.
You also can capture, edit, and publish your digital home movies in standard or high-definition format with the updated Windows Movie Maker and Windows Movie Maker HD.
