In Windows Vista, Microsoft will be dramatically improving some of the baseline productivity features of the Windows OS. That means, among other things, that the system will include a consolidated contacts store that the company expects all email and related solutions to use or synchronize with, and a new Windows Calendar, similar to Apple's iCal, that, among other things, lets you publish your schedule to standard ICS (Internet Calendar System) format and even to RSS (Real Simple Syndication) (
Figure). I'm told that future versions of the Windows Calendar will be even more full-featured than the version found in build 5219. Certainly, that won't be hard: This version doesn't even let you create new events or tasks, and the only available view is 7-day.
Windows Backup (codenamed SafeDocs) has been overhauled since Beta 1 (
Figure). You can configure a backup schedule now, specify where that backup will be written to (CD/DVD, local disks, shared folders on network drives), and specify which files to back up (
Figure).
Windows Vista build 5219 also includes an integrated Shadow Copy client, which you manage from the Shadow
Copies tab of the Properties dialog for your hard drive (
Figure). This feature, which first originated in
Windows Server 2003, lets you cache older versions of data files so that you can recover information in the event of an error. So if you overwrite a critical file, or inadvertently change part of a document, you can "go back in time" and access older versions.
Let's see how this works. First, you need to enable Shadow Copies from the aforementioned dialog. Then, after you've mucked up a file, you can access its Properties dialog in Explorer and navigate to the Previous Versions pane (
Figure). Here, you can select between various different versions of the document (and your time travel experience is complete). This is a great feature, and I'm glad to see it being added to the Windows client.