Boasting an enhanced graphics engine, Avalon, Vista renders complex images with more detail than before, producing photo-quality wallpaper for your desktop.

The familiar Start menu, very similar to that found in Windows XP, returns in Vista. Apart from a new overall look and feel, Vista's real changes are inside the operating system: 64-bit addressable memory, searchable file metadata, and improved graphics capabilities.

Like XP, Vista allows multiple users of a single system to have individual accounts. Users can create or change their own passwords and decide whether to share files with others.

The new control panel groups familiar tools for easier access. Vista uses a Web-like directory structure, with the main category in bold, and the individual tools listed below.

If you long for familiar screens, such as those of Windows XP, they're still there within Vista. Here's the "classic" Control Panel. Note how much more detail about each task is available in this updated view.

The improved graphics capabilities shine in the My Computer screen, with brightly colored graphs and graphics to illustrate the current state of your system.

Although Microsoft bowed to market pressure and is releasing a version of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2, IE 7 for Vista remains one of the key selling points for this new operating system.

Vista's new graphics engine, Avalon, allows detailed thumbnail views of all media files, eliminating the need to guess.

New search capabilities built into Vista make it easy to group and index your music files.

Embedded within Vista is an integrated desktop search. You're not limited to just filename and file type; Vista will allow you to search for a variety of criteria, such as the bit depth and camera model information supplied by your digital camera.

Windows Vista makes it easy to associate keywords, authors, and ratings on the fly to almost any file. Every time you open a new file, save it to disk, or even drag and drop it into a new folder, you have the opportunity to change the metadata. Metadata is important to Windows search, allowing you to find and access files that might otherwise become lost on your hard drive.

Although Windows Vista won't include the much-touted Windows File Structure (WinFS), it will still allow you to think outside the box. With Windows Vista, you'll be able to organize files into virtual stacks--based on author, keywords, or ratings--without physically moving the files on your hard drive. For those of us who still remember DOS, this will take some getting used to, but for those who embrace this new concept, the possibilities become endless.

Thumbnail images aren't limited to graphics. Here, files marked for deletion are clearly visible, reducing the chance you'll make a mistake and delete the wrong file. For more, read our First Take of Windows Vista Beta 1.