iTechNote

The latest Windows Vista RC2 has improved tremendously but you may want to keep using Windows XP until it has gone through a few cycles of security & bug fixes after its official release. Are you aware of the features that are missing if you continue to use Windows XP? Or even worse what limitations Microsoft has imposed on the so-called Windows XP “down-level” features to discourage you from using the older Windows?

Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 7 running on Windows XP will not run in Protected Mode or support Parental Controls.

In Protected Mode, Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista cannot modify user or system files and settings without user action. All communications occur via a broker process that mediates between the Internet Explorer browser and the operating system. The broker process cannot be scripted to act without user input, thereby reducing the likelihood of unwanted software downloads or installation. The highly restrictive broker process prohibits workarounds from bypassing Protected Mode. Any scripted actions or automatic processes are prevented from downloading data or affecting the system.

To help keep kids safe online, Parental Controls allow parent to monitor and safely change the child’s safety level remotely. The safety level carries over to many PC activities other than browsing the Internet, such as playing games or accessing the machine outside of certain approved usage times. Further, a parent can view a child’s browsing session logs, and these logs cannot be removed without the parent’s permission.

Of course, you can still live with Firefox with “Protected Mode” enabled from day one and a third party Parental Controls extension such as ProCon. Firefox does not feature built-in parental controls, content filtering, pornography blocking, or website blocking features.

Internet Explorer 7 RC1 for Windows XP is available for download here.

Windows Media Player 11

When running on Windows XP, the following Windows Media Player 11 features and capabilities are not available:

• Playing content (including DRM) on your PC from another device
• Viewing content from the Windows Vista Media Library on other PCs or digital devices (such as TiVo)
• Playback of premium HD video content
• Shell integration with Windows Media Player
• Content Indexer change notification to sync My Music and the WMP library
• DVD full-screen playback enhancements
• DRM Transcode
• High-quality video streaming over home networks
• Media foundation for playback

Without getting into technicalities, you simply will experience a lot of troubles playing your favorite music, video or DVD collections anywhere you like. The simplest solution is to avoid using Windows Media Player at all. For those with a huge collection of music or video in Windows Media format, you are out of luck. You can either convert them to other format or stop upgrading your Windows Media Player.

As in the case of IE7, you can try out the pre-release WMP 11 Beta 2 here.

Windows Defender

This is the only component that more or less run the same on both Windows. There are only two minor differences. The scan time is faster on Windows Vista due to the use of an index kept by Windows Vista of files that have been changed. A known malware is also caught earlier in the process of opening a file in Windows Vista.

You can install the Windows Defender beta 2 today.

The rest of the features available in Windows XP with limitations are more meant for developers. Limitations are imposed on ImageX, Windows Deployment Service, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). The use of new APIs in existing software is always slow in the developer community. We probably won’t see many applications using these new APIs for years to come.

If you are getting more interested in Windows Vista after reading this article, for a comprehensive overview of all the features in Windows Vista, you can read the 299 pages The Windows Vista Product Guide available in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Windows Vista XPS format (.xps). To view XPS format in Windows XP, you need to download .NET framework 3.0. If you are reading this article in Windows Vista RC2, just download and open it.

If you still want to stick to Windows XP, this article will get you a good start.