From
here.
Security enhancements: Yay! It's about time.
A new searching mechanism: Doesn't sound impressive, but from what I hear, it's basically the virtual folders thing Apple has. I'm very divided on this - if it's highly programmable (i.e. I can write my own little plugins to search how I want), it could be awesome. If it's restricted to half a dozen built-in filters, I don't care. We'll see.
New laptop features: I don't really care about this, but I acknowledge that others might find this far more important than I do.
Parental controls: Geck.
Better home networking: I will admit that I haven't had any problems with this since Win98.
Visual changes: Yeah, that's . . . that's just great. Can't wait. Woo.
Deployment changes: Again, I don't care, but I suspect others really do.
IPv6 support: Woo!
Client-side caching of server-side data: This would be a lot more interesting if I knew WHAT SERVER IT'S TALKING ABOUT. And why is this OS-level stuff? Web browser, I can see. Email program, I can see. But it is meaningless!
Whole-volume encryption: Kind of neat. Won't use it, but kind of neat.
"Synchronization engine": Maybe this is referring to the painfully useless "My Briefcase" feature? I dunno.
Laptops with auxiliary display: Dual-monitor for laptops? I don't see what the big deal is here - I thought it already had dual-screen support for laptops. Maybe I'm missing something.
Automatic hard drive optimization: You mean like the existing one that decides to grind the hard drive when I've been AFK for ten minutes?
Secure boot-up process: Meh. Physical access == full access. The only way they can really secure it is with, surprise, whole-volume encryption. So maybe this is redundant.
Overall . . . a few things that I say "neato" about. Like the folders. And the IPv6. And . . . honestly, that's about it.
This took *how* many years?