We’ve just presented the main hardware-related new features we think are interesting mentioning in more detail. There are several other new hardware-related features, like:

• An improved backup utility (accessed thru Backup and Restore Center icon on Control Panel and available on all Vista versions but Starter – the number of backup options is limited to the Vista version you have, though).
• An iSCSI initiator (accessed thru iSCSI Initiator icon on Control Panel and available on all versions).
• HotStart, a feature that allows your or PC builders to assign a special key to turn on or to wake up your computer and automatically open a given program, for instance a key that is a shortcut to Windows Media Player would turn on your PC and open this program automatically. Of course if your PC is already turned on, it would only launch the program. This feature is available on all Vista versions but Starter.
• Better support to tablet PCs and similar devices on Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate versions, with handwriting recognition and touch screen support (Tablet PC Settings icon on Control Panel).
• Speech recognition on all Vista versions, however it seems that this feature isn't available on localized versions targeted to countries that do not have English as their official language.

Some old options have now new names. For instance “My Computer” is now simply called “Computer”, “ScanDisk” is now called “Check Disk”, “System Restore” is now called “System Protection” on Advanced options of Control Panel’s System icon – but on the help files and on the Start menu it is still referred as “System Restore”, which can confuse some users – and “Dr. Watson” was replaced by “Problem Reports and Solutions”.

As we mentioned earlier, the goal of this tutorial was to present only new hardware-related features of Windows Vista. If you want to learn about all new features brought by this new Windows version, take a look at Microsoft’s website.