Contents 100 Things You Must Know About Microsoft's Most Important Product Launch Ever • Vital Stats About Vista • No Surprises With Vista--Thankfully • Vista's Security Challenge • Office 2007: Bells And Whistles • A Look At Exchange 2007 • Steve Ballmer's Own Top 10 List • Competitors' Take On Vista • Windows Vista Timeline • Windows Vista Image Gallery • Our Guide To The Guides

1

Few companies will upgrade immediately. One in five Exchange users are still served by the 9-year-old Exchange 5.5, according to Gartner, which estimates most companies won't begin the switch until 2008.

2

Exchange 2007 calls for 64-bit servers and Windows Server 2003 x64 edition. New chips like Athlon, Xeon, and Opteron will get the job done, but most Pentium systems won't.

3

64-bit memory leads to an estimated 75% performance improvement over Exchange 2003. In general, administrative tasks run faster--not the e-mail itself, says beta tester Todd Wilson with Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health.

4

Exchange 2007 can prevent e-mail, too. Among the server's controls is the ability to block e-mail between groups of employees not allowed to share data.

5

The unified in-box takes a step forward. Exchange 2007 supports voice mail and faxes, and there will be integration with Microsoft's forthcoming Office Communications Server.

6

Take it with you. Exchange 2007 supports mobile search and better calendaring for mobile users, as well as the ability to wipe data from lost or stolen devices.

7

Exchange 2007 can be parceled across servers--gateway access on one computer, security and calendaring on another--with the added benefit of improved redundancy.

(click image for larger view) Windows Mail links to Vista's calendar

8

Alternatives abound. IBM is expected to announce its answer to Exchange 2007 in January. Zimbra's e-mail software runs on Linux servers. Google's Gmail or Microsoft's Hotmail/Live Mail may be sufficient for small companies.

9

Development gets easier. Microsoft cleaned up a morass of older APIs and is emphasizing new Web services APIs.

10

Outlook, Microsoft's e-mail client, is vastly improved. Bells and whistles include a built-in RSS reader, better search, automatic color coding of messages, and the ability to automatically delete mail after a designated period of time.