To get them, click Start, type Update, and then click Windows Update. There’s nothing especially important, just updates to the Junk Email filter and the Malicious Software Removal Tool. There are also some Office 2003 updates. You shouldn’t need to reboot.

We’ve moved past all the betas, but I found this post showing the evolution of the Vista user interface interesting…

IntelliAdmin.com: The Progression of Vista through screenshots

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGBHUldWyHw]

Clearly, the visitors at YouTube love it!

I regularly get questions from readers asking how they can connect external monitors to their laptops. If your laptop doesn’t have a docking station, your only option is a fairly lousy USB video adapter like this:

USB video adapters are limited in resolution because the bandwidth available from USB is pretty limited. It won’t be available for a couple of months, but Asus is announcing a better solution. This one uses the Express Card slot in some new computers (a faster version of the PC Card/PCMCIA slot in all laptops), which provides way more bandwidth than USB. It’s full of features, including an LCD display, and I bet it’ll be wicked expensive. As a bonus, it should be powerful enough to turn an average laptop into a good gaming computer. Hopefully, we’ll see more pedestrian external Express Card video adapter to follow soon.
Asus XG Station is Worlds First External Laptop Graphics Card – Gizmodo

SideShow is a Windows Vista feature that provides for external displays that run simple applications (like those gadgets in your sidebar). It’s hard to explain, but this video shows it in action. It’ll take a few more months before you can have your own.
Hands-on: Video of Asus SideShow laptop – Engadget

It’s worth it just to hear him say “auxiliary”.

ZDNet is reporting that Microsoft is planning a home server product code-named “Quattro”. Microsoft has actually had a vision for a home server product for many years–I saw one demonstrated during a tour of the “Microsoft Home of the Future“. It’s got a lot of potential to act as a central media server for recording TV shows and distribution audio and video throughout the house, as well as managing home automation, home security, and family communications. Microsoft Media Center has been a step in that direction, but so far, all we’ve learned is that most consumers aren’t ready to buy a dedicated computer that simply acts as a server.
My bet is that Quattro becomes an optional feature of Windows Vista or a later version of Microsoft’s consumer operating system.

The article also discusses the possibility of Microsoft announcing LiveDrive, an Internet storage service that you could use for sharing and backing up data. Not an original idea, but Microsoft has a close connection with the consumer that could quickly put them on the top of the market.

» Microsoft to unveil Windows Home Server at CES | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com