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Other
Enhancements
Although this preview was basically to show you some of the GUI enchancements,
there are also plenty of other key enhancements that the end user isn't
necessarily going to notice. We will briefly cover most of them.
Avalon
Avalon is the new Windows Desktop Composition Engine that replaces the old GDI
and GDI+. It mainly uses the power of your graphics accelerator to take
a load off the CPU and provide an enhanced graphical user experience at no cost
to the application. Windows are rendered to back buffers then combined
together to create the final screen image.
WinFS
WinFS,
which I believe stands for "Future System", is based on SQL and sits on
top of NTFS file system. Files can then be viewed or grouped by
attributes such as author, project, etc. It basically makes
Windows Explorer task based instead of file location based which makes it much
faster.
Indigo
Indigo is the codename for a set of .NET technologies for building and running
connected systems. It is a new breed of communications infrastructure built
around the Web services architecture.
AERO
AERO
is a new user experience for Longhorn. Unlike the rest, this is one
feature the end user will appreciate. It consists of guidelines,
recommendations, and user experience values that help your applications get
the most out of the Windows Code Name Longhorn. It is designed to
improve the customer's user experience. The sidebar plays an important
role in this technology.
Conclusion
**click to enlarge**
Well,
there you have it. Microsoft's next operating system is proving to be a
major step forward in terms of features, enhancements and overall user
experience. Hardware support, even at this early stage, is fairly solid.
This is one key feature that I find extremely important and so far, it is
showing good signs. Although a majority of PC users are already quite
happy with Windows XP, Windows Codename Longhorn brings a wide array of new
features to the table that may just make an upgrade worthwhile.
Questions? Comments?
Discuss them here!
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