Windows Vista Weblog

XP: Without third party software, the parental controls in Windows XP were rather limited and really didn’t prevent children from visiting inappropriate sites on the Internet.

VISTA: Excellent parental controls are built-into Vista, mirroring the powerful features that today’s third party software offers to parents today. Parents have control over the sites their children visit, and are able to see every site they visit or tried to visit.

The software lets parents determine what times computer use is allowed, which games they play and software they run, and are able to track email messages and instant messages that their children send.

NETWORKING

XP: Unless you know what you’re doing, Microsoft’s ‘set up Wizard’ for wired and wireless networks could seemingly never be counted on to actually work, leading to many frustrations for people simply trying to network two or more computers together.

VISTA: A great deal of concerted effort has gone into making Vista the easiest operating system to network with others, especially other Vista systems, so that anyone, even without massive computing experience, can easily set up a wired or wireless network.

For Australians, the Vista launch starts quite literally in a few hours, with proceedings starting at 9.30am on Thursday the 30th of November. We’ll be bringing you updates from the launch, along with any surprises they unveil or that we uncover.