In the final installment in our four-part series on Windows Vista, we look at what some of the new features will do for you

Vista’s new features are apparent from the moment you start installing it. If you’ve ever used disk imaging software, then you’ll know how quickly you can load up an entire hard drive from a saved image.

Vista now uses similar technology to speed up installation. We were able to install Windows Vista Ultimate Edition onto a clean hard drive in about 20 minutes, from booting the installation DVD to arriving at the desktop.

User interaction during installation is kept to a bare minimum, with the process running almost entirely unattended. Even upgrading an XP installation doesn’t take much longer, but if it finds there are incompatible programs or hardware, it will ask you to uninstall them before the upgrade is performed.

As ever, if you can do a clean install it will give you much less trouble in the long run.

Welcome wagon
Once the desktop has loaded for the first time, the Welcome Center presents you with a selection of tasks to help customise your installation and tailor it to your own needs. These include connecting to the internet, transferring files and settings from other PCs, and setting up additional users.

Here, you’ll also find an introduction to Vista’s new features, and true beginners will find demo videos explaining the basics of subjects such as how to use a mouse, and how to use files and folders.

Below the Getting Started section is a separate pane devoted to downloads and offers from Microsoft and, potentially, the manufacturer of your system. From here you could sign up for Windows Live Onecare or buy an upgrade for your copy of Windows Vista.

By default, the Welcome Center appears each time Windows starts, but it can be disabled via a checkbox.

Media Center
Windows Media Center is now integrated with the Home Premium and Ultimate versions of Vista. Many improvements have been made to the current version: it’s optimised for widescreen displays and has an enhanced, more intuitive, user interface.

At present, Media Center Extender support is confined to the Xbox 360, but this works extremely well, even when connecting over a wireless network. Windows Vista will automatically detect an Xbox 360 on your network and offer to set it up for you.

Integrated HD audio
There’s a completely revamped audio subsystem, designed from scratch to be glitch-free and with very low latency. The goal is to create an audio subsystem powerful and robust enough to enable professional media creation and editing at a very high quality, aiming to give the same responsiveness and quality as consumer electronics devices.

The force behind this audio system is the Windows Audio Video Excellence initiative (Wave). Benefits include audio that doesn’t stutter when the PC is under heavy load, support for multi-channel audio and per-application volume controls that allow you to adjust the volume of each running program and the overall speaker output individually.

Photo
Management of digital photos has been improved and simplified with Windows Photo Gallery.

This lets you import photos from a camera, perform basic image editing, such as red-eye correction and exposure adjustment, and tag them with metadata such as ratings, or the location in which pictures were taken. Similar facilities are available for video clips, and a single click will add items to Windows Movie Maker, or burn them to data or video discs.

Parental controls
Sophisticated parental controls have been added to Vista and allow parents to restrict access to unsuitable content in a number ways, as well as providing logs so you can monitor a user’s activity, either on the internet or on the PC itself.

Customisable blacklists and whitelists can be created for web content, and downloads can be blocked entirely. You can restrict access to the PC according to time of day or day of the week, and installed games can be restricted according to ESRB rating, content or title. Access to installed software can also be restricted on a program-by-program basis.