Following my posting Windows Vista on tour, Paul posted a comment that the new photo import wizard sounds like a real 'downgrade' from XP, in that the Windows Vista photo import wizard there is no longer a step to select the photos you want to import, so rather than just respond with a comment I thought it was worth a formal response as this has also been a point of discussion on Microsoft’s internal photography discussion alias to whether this was a good thing or not. I must admit that when I first used Windows Vista many months ago, I too was of that opinion but not any more. So before you decide it’s a bad thing read on….

Importing is just a means to an end, and in Vista we focused on getting you to that end as quickly and painlessly as possible. Once all your pictures are imported to the Windows Photos Gallery you will see a link in the navigation tree labeled ‘Recently Imported’.  This allows you to quickly find all the photos you’ve imported in the last 30 days.  It’s always where you will find yourself immediately after the import completes.  Then you can quickly view, delete, organize, edit, and share you photos with just a few clicks of the mouse.  You might have been used to deleting the duds in the Windows XP import but we think it’s worth the wait to acquire them and take a second look in the Gallery.  It’s hard to tell if a photo is really salvageable from a thumbnail.  In the Gallery you can look at your photos full screen to see if the photo is really hopeless or it might just be worth saving. What about if you forget to erase your card after your last import and don’t want to re-import the same images again?  No problem, Vista has duplicate detection.  The Import Pictures experience recognizes files it has already imported and doesn’t try to import them again.  No need to make you go in and select the new pictures by hand anymore.  

You’ll see a lot of other changes from XP but don’t let that scare you off, we have spent many hours testing the usability of Windows Vista to ensure all the changes end up in an overall better experience.

So as already posted I have been very busy over the last couple of weeks, but I did promise to let you know how I got on with Windows Vista while on safari. Well even though I was using a two year old thin and light PC, the only issue I had was being a bit short of horsepower when importing the 15mb raw files and 2mb jpegs.

There were a couple changes worth noting, firstly when using the new default acquisition and import tool, you have to import all your files via the tool, unlike Windows XP you can chose upfront which files to import. You can custom tag your files on import with single or multiple tags so they are imported they are immediately organized in a way that makes it easier and faster to find them, but don’t worry if you don’t add tags as Windows Vista adds default tags such as day, date, time etc. which are all searchable. Top tip, if you want to add multiple tags you need to use a semicolon after the first tag then leave a space and then enter your additional tags e.g. Tag1; Tag2  this is not apparent in the tool. Once imported the scaleable views allow you to preview your files in much grater detail than just the standard thumbnail available in Windows XP, this both applies in the explorer view or in the new photo gallery.  I did manage to try out the slide show feature on my fellow travellers, who were suitably impressed with the range of themes that could be applied and how it added to the experience of sharing photos. The only thing I couldn’t do was create a picture DVD to give one of my fellow travellers, as you do need a compatible WDM graphics card even if you have Windows Vista Premium or Ultimate editions installed.

One of the more advanced features that I use is in the explorer view. We have now added enhanced column header controls which allows you to search on a new wealth of data such as, focal length, camera make, camera model, lens make, lens model, f-stop, white balance, exposure program, etc. etc. So however you want to stack /search your photos there’s a view for the way you want to work. Just a quick word on stacking files, this new view shows currently displayed data organized by stacks based on the values in a specific column. For instance, you can select the foal length header and choose to stack by camera model, and all the files currently in view, irrespective of where they are physically stored on your hard drive, are rearranged into stacks of by those criteria. These stacks behave much like folders in that you can click to open them and see the items inside, but unlike folders, stacks have no physical location on the hard disk. In a sense, they are virtual views of your content.

 I have also presented these features and many more to a number of Photo journalists over the past couple of weeks they were impressed with the range of options available out of the box and commented that these features will be great for the amateur photographer and even the pro/semi pro photographer will benefit from some of features as part of their workflow. 

So now I've been on Safari, I decide that I needed to rename my blog to reflect the broader nature of future postings, so it is now called My Vista rather than a Taste of Tanzania

These are busy times at Microsoft!  I’ve been spending lot of time with press over the last couple of weeks and had great feed back. One of the more unusual discussions I had was with a group of Mac journalists, while I doubt they will ever publish positive reviews, deep down I think they were suitably impressed.
Also last week, just a few days after the final lines of code of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system were written, we started helping Microsoft employees to upgrade their work PCs to the new software. With so many people using so many different PCs and related hardware this was the biggest test yet of the new versions. But so far, so good! Over 3 days we comprehensively upgraded over 800 computers.  First we helped them backup their files onto external storage, then we reinstalled with a clean build of Windows Vista Enterprise Edition, Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise edition and all the other related software our staff need to get their jobs don, all in one single image. We then helped them connect securely to the office network domain and restore their files from their backup and then sent them on their merry way confident that we’d given their laptops a new lease of life! On average it took each employee just 1 hour to upgrade their computer!

The feedback so far has been excellent and everyone seems to be enjoying the new software. I’m really looking forward to 30^th January when we launch the software and can make it available to consumers around the world.

To find out more about Windows Vista please visit www.windowsvista.co.uk