Microsoft’s Vista desktop operating system is being touted as the most significant product release since Windows 95 was introduced 11 years ago. Rather than a minor upgrade from XP, much of the underlying architecture of Windows Vista has been completely reworked, giving it the potential to make Vista more reliable and more secure than XP.

■Security: A large part of Vista’s aims. Features include Defender, an anti-spyware tool, while the new Internet Explorer 7 includes a phishing filter and anti-spoofing technology (Spoofing is where a person or program masquerades as another by falsifying data). Vista has two-way firewall technology for Windows, which filters both incoming and outgoing network traffic.