Windows Vista Ultimate kiosk video

Here’s a pretty cool video about Windows Vista Ultimate in a kiosk format just released on Microsoft Downloads today. It’s not quite clear exactly why this is available to download, as the accompany description written as if it was created by the Ultimate team. “Our own team participated in the creation of this video, so that is why you see Ultimate Extras featured prominently. We owe a compliment to Microsoft Studios, who used our content and produced the clip.”

Most of you are probably not comfortable with downloading a 118MB video about an operating system, so here’s a version I uploaded to YouTube.

For the first four minutes, the video gives an overview of Windows Vista Ultimate in general; including home and entertainment, mobility and business features. The rest of the three minutes feature a special on Windows Ultimate Extras; including DreamScene, Hold’Em, BitLocker online key storage and language packs.

Throughout the video, the screenshots tend to sway side to side at a weird perspective which makes me a little light-headed. But the animated black Aurora background seen prominently at the start and end of the video is very cool!

Thanks to Josh Phillips who tipped me off about this earlier today.

7 insightful thoughts

  1. Thx but the music is bothering 😉

    Did someone realized that Vista shown in the videos on the official Vista website is very slow? Even dragging gadgets around looks like a slideshow. Cant MS create a video capturing tool for there own needs like Apple can?

  2. The music isn’t so great. I would like to know though how to put the clock gadget in the lower right. Also how do you dynamically change the thumb nail size in photo gallery?

  3. My goodness…
    Typical microsoft marketing. They forgot that videos are made up of audio, too. Why not have a human voice (or face) along with the video. How many non-techies watching this video & actually understand what’s going on?

  4. It’s funny how Microsoft’s software tends to be too stark or too gushy, but can’t find that cool middle ground in between like Apple does. Take, for example, the quick launch buttons. Absolutely nothing happened here – same old thing as in XP. They could have jazzed it up while making it more useful (as opposed to removing functionality, like, um, dockable custom toolbars?). Apple’s launcher is fluid, fun, and way more useful. Window management? Absolutely nothing new here – alt+tab (and now win-tab) just flips between windows. On the other hand, you’ve got DreamScene and a ton of wallpapers. These are pretty useless and actually distracting. Couldn’t they have dedicated those resources towards making Flip3D more useful like Expose?

  5. @Kevin: No need for a feature usefull like Exposé because Windows got a usefull taskbar to see all open windows and dragging things around. And there is still this old feature to arrange windows on the desktop. Flip 3D is the more visual version of the old Flip feature for beginners. Its also accessable with only mouse or only keyboard.

    The quick start launcher is extremely usefull: now you can choose things by pressing WIN+1 to WIN+9. So with the new search and Start menu at the WIN-key, quick launch at WIN+numbers, Flip 3D at WIN+TAB and Sidebar at WIN+Spacebar its a really clear concept. Better than Mac OS X’s – IMO.

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