Late last year I jumped at the chance to download a beta copy of Windows Vista and take a good look at the new operating system before it hit the shelves. In doing so I agreed to the terms & conditions which included communication to and from Microsoft. One of these communications has been the Technet newsletter, aimed at business users it goes deep into Microsoft technologies where even I find myself lost. But still I don’t dismiss the newsletter as junk, I always scan through to see if anything takes my fancy, and this month it did! Vista: After Hours, an event looking at Vista in the home environment away from the office, perfect, as my business is based upon home users and not business! So I booked my place and on 1st May travelled up the motorway to the showcase cinema in Leeds, yes that was the venue, I wouldn’t go all the way to Leeds just to watch a movie!

This was the first technet event that looked at home users, the crowd was divided into 2 categories, the hardcore gamers and the business bofins, both equally as nerdy as each other! I was lucky to see some of the first UK demos of new Microsoft products, I was quite excited when they announced this at the beginning and even more so by the end of the evening.

The first half of the event dived into Vista’s new features, looking at the integrated back up feature, the fantastic search capabilities, Windows Movie Maker and the inclusion of DVD burning support. The show was 99% demo based and questions quickly boomed across the room before reaching the Q&A point.

A question I’ve been asked quite alot recently is “How do I know what my child is doing on the computer?”, my initial thought was Net Nanny, it seems to be the popular software that springs to mind, but as I’ve never installed or used such software I’ve been left clueless in this department. It was great to hear about Windows now including a hyped up suite built into Vista and by watching the demos I was able to put this feature into practice the very next day for my brother and his family.

But the highlight for me was the first UK demo of Windows Home Server, it was something I hadn’t heard or read about and quite frankly it blew me away, it was a multimedia dream come true. Providing a central storage facility for files, music, video and automatic back up of each connected PC, clever security warnings alerting users when another users PC’s antivirus or antispyware programs are out of date, and being able to remotely connect and share files from locations away from home. For the average 1 PC household you may not see the need or feel a server is extreme, too business orientated, but for many this is just what the home has needed in an affordable solution for many years. I’ve already signed up for phase 2 of beta testing and can’t wait to get my hands on it!

The second half of the evening focussed on multimedia extending using Media Center, this is something I’ve been passionate about for quite a while. Being able to access music and video from the PC elsewhere in the house, introduced to XP in 2005 as part of Microsofts vision of a digital lifestyle, Vista’s Media Center hasn’t had a major overhaul but yet the feel is very new.

The evening concluded with an exclusive demo of Halo 2 cross platform, admittedly it didn’t light my fire but was clear to see the excitement on the face of many of the gamers.

I had a great evening and look forward to the next one, it was topped off with a chat to one of the presenters which gave me some insight into a problem I’d been having with my Media Center, I’ve since been in touch to discuss the issue further and he’s publishing this on his blog, you can check it out here:

http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit/

Related posts:

1. Upgrade XP to Vista
2. Windows Vista Service Pack 1