CNET'S QUICK GUIDE: Windows Vista Business Edition

File sharing

Windows Vista makes several improvements upon the basic file sharing available within Windows XP. For example, within Windows XP, you can share files on your computer with others via a log-on/log-off capability, but you can't control the rights a remote user has: They have either all rights or no rights at all. With Windows Vista, you can save a file to a private or a public folder. The Windows Vista Sharing Wizard allows you to specify who among the account users on your PC and the users on a local network will have access to the public folders. The Sharing Wizard also composes a short e-mail with a link allowing the remote user access to the specific files to be shared. Within Windows Explorer, you can quickly display all the content that is available to be shared, and at any time, you can change a file's status from public back to private.


If you need to work from home, Windows Vista builds upon the stateless computing currently within Windows XP: Roaming User Profiles (RUP) and Folder Redirection (FR). Currently, RUP can be a long process, as it copies all of your files, while FR is more efficient, since it caches the data locally, but FR limits the amount of data you can take with you. In Windows Vista Business Edition, Group Policy allows IT administrators to combine the two, allowing the deployment of RUP with FR enabled. For example, a user can roam only certain settings but not the bulk of data, such as documents or application data. Also, the Roaming User settings will contain the appropriate FR settings, so when a user logs on for the first time, his or her documents will start to sync with the PC's local cache. All of that synched content will, of course, work with the new search and organization features in Windows Vista.

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