Andrews Family

Recently I did a series of posts on the new Windows Vista and its features. The conclusion was that although Vista has some really nice features most people probably don’t need to upgrade their current PC. But did you know that you can get several of these new features on your current Windows XP PC for free? Yep, that’s right and I’m not just talking about Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11.

Windows Desktop Search - Ever wish you could find things on your computer as easily as you can find things on the web. Most web search engines scour the web and create an index so that when you search for something it just looks it up in the index instead of going to every site. Windows Desktop Search is a search engine for your PC. It adds a search box to the taskbar and indexes your files when you aren’t using your computer so that when you type something in it gives you instant results. It even starts giving you results before you finish typing. It searches most of the common file types as well as your email and contacts. You can also get add-ins for file types that it doesn’t natively support such as the one for searching your Internet Explorer history. I’ve recommended Google Desktop previously, but since Windows makes both the OS and the search engine they have better integration between the two. It’s obviously helpful when you don’t remember where you saved a file or when you are looking for an email on a topic but you don’t remember who sent it, but I’ve also found it useful for more common tasks. If I need to look up an address or phone number it is quick to just start typing their name into Windows Desktop Search which immediately pops up a link to their contact information in Outlook which is quicker then the 5 or 6 mouse click to actually open Outlook and navigate to their contact.

Windows Defender - This is Microsoft’s free anti-spyware protection utility and it is the same as what is built-in to Vista. Other free anti-spyware tools require you to manually scan your PC, however Defender provides real-time protection which means that it is constantly monitoring for spyware similar to how anti-virus software watches files you access for viruses. Like anti-virus software it also updates itself automatically.

Family Safety from Windows Live OneCare (Parental Controls) - The parental controls in Vista are in my opinion the biggest feature for the typical family with kids. Family Safety isn’t as full featured as what is in Vista, but it is a good start for still being in beta. It installs on your computer and then requires you to log in with a Windows Live (MSN Messenger) login. As the ‘parent’ you can set the policy for your children’s accounts to filter the web content on different categories. It also lets you record their history so you can see where they’ve been. It is a little annoying to have to log in everytime you access the web, but when Livy is old enough to start surfing I’d want something to protect her from stumbling across something nasty. Using the Windows Live accounts also works well for most people since they typically use the same Windows user account for the whole family.