It won't be long before we see and hear lots of publicity urging us to buy the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, due in January 2007. This week we'll take a look at some of Vista's features so you can start thinking about whether the update from Windows XP to Vista will be worthwhile for you.

The first point to make is that if you're running an older computer with Windows 98 or Windows ME, the only option you have to use Windows Vista's features is to purchase a new computer in 2007. The lifecycle for 98 and ME terminated at the beginning of this month, that is, Microsoft no longer officially supports these old operating systems. So let's look at how Vista expands on what we now do with XP.

Digital cameras, both still and movie, have become part and parcel of our life but, when XP was released five years ago, they weren't as affordable as now - nor were they so technically sophisticated. So Vista has the Windows Photo Gallery, where we can not only store our photos, but organise and find them (again). As well, there are in-built editing tools to crop, rotate, remove red-eye and adjust colour and brightness. At the moment we need an extra graphics program such as Irfanview or Paint.NET to carry out these sort of tasks. Windows Photo Gallery also has the tools to let us share our photos with others, ranging from email to creating a slideshow which can be burned to CD or DVD to play on other computers or standalone DVD players.

Then there are movies. Of course, Vista has to cater for High-Definition movie cameras (yes, ok, at the moment they're expensive, but we know how quickly this type of technology advances and prices fall). So Vista's Movie Maker does what we're used to in XP but can cope with home movies in HD format and burn the old and new formats to DVD using DVD Maker.

We not only want to edit and watch our own home movies and photos - our digitial entertainment world also includes movies we buy or hire on DVD, television and music. It's already possible to try out the Vista version of Windows Media Player to play movies, listen to music and browse through photo collections. In Australia the uptake of Windows Media Center has been thwarted by a court case prohibiting the use of electronic program guides and this situation doesn't look like changing in the future. So it would appear that using Vista's media centre features won't be possible and we'll never be able to take advantage of the connectivity with the XBox to share media around the home.

It goes without saying that the Internet is part and parcel of Windows Vista: browsing web sites, mail, searching, and receiving updated information from your favourite sites (RSS feeds). Internet Explorer 7 is currently being trialled by tens of thousands of users and a lot of work is being done to improve searching, whether it be to find documents, files and information on our computer or from the Net. Being able to subscribe to our favourite sites and receive headlines of new information when it becomes available is an important aspect of today's Net if only for the simple reason that it's now impossible time-wise to browse all our favourite sites to check if they've been updated - RSS feeds give us the convenience of the information coming to us.

Last but not least Windows Vista has a whole new security regime, part of which can be seen in Family Safety Settings where parents can control their children's access to the Internet and games. Also as part of security Vista has more strigent conditions under which programs can run with administrative priviledges (e.g., currently most games assume administrative permission to run and Vista won't allow this situation).

Perhaps for the first time we're going to need to put some work into deciding whether we need a new operating system such as Windows Vista. With so much happening in the digital entertainment world, Vista might be what we'll need in the next five years or so for television, our movies, photos and music.

Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger now interoperate, that is, if you have Yahoo! Messenger buddies, you can add them to your Live Messenger contact list and chat away happily from Live Messenger itself - no need to use Yahoo! Messenger. This interopability has resulted in a worldwide instant messaging network of about 300 million users.

Although only available at present in the U.S. (and about to be trialled in the U.K.), Windows Expo is a place where you can find, sell and buy items for free. It works with Live Local if you need driving directions to pick up your new purchases. As well you can restrict what you're selling to only those people on your Live Messenger contact list.