After a long time waiting, Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista is finally out. If you use Yahoo Messenger for your IM needs, then you will really like this specially-made-for-Windows-Vista release of Yahoo Messenger.

As you can see in the image, the new version has beautiful graphics. That is the biggest change. It uses the Aero features to deliver a very pretty looking UI.

However, beautiful UI is not the only change that is present. There are some more features that have been added to the messenger with a large number of features promised over the next few months.

We go over some of the new features that are now available in this ‘Preview’ of the Yahoo Messenger for Vista.

Skins

There is a capability of skinning the Yahoo Messenger window. Not only that, there is the capability to skin individual conversation Windows. This allows you to keep the visualization interesting once you have a number of conversartions going on. It remembers the skin that you choose for a given contact so that when you open a conversation with that contact again, it will use the same skin.

Sidebar Gadgets

There is the capability of dragging a contact to the Vista Sidebar. This allows you to track the status of and quickly access your more common contacts.

Tabs

This is a feature that I like a lot. If you have multiple conversations going, you no longer need to have so many windows open. Each conversation can appear as a tab in one conversation window. All you have to do is to drag mutltiple conversations in the same window and it will add it as a new tab.

Contact Scaling

You can choose a bigger size to see contact images or avatars on your messenger window. Not only can I see contacts in a bigger mode, if I resize the main Window to make it bigger, the contact list switches to a multi-column mode to show more contacts (as in the image below).

Emoticons

The emoticons are now handled differently. When you receive or send an emoticon, it animates in a bigger size before going back to the normal size.

This is just a preview release and Yahoo has provided a feedback button on each window to let users give feedback for improvement. Let’s see what changed come about between now and the final release.

If you have been running the Ultimate version of Windows Vista and have been wondering how it is different from the other versions in daily use; here’s an answer. Windows Vista comes with a bunch of Extras which are not available to lesser flavors of Vista. One of these extras that we have been tracking is called Windows DreamScene (check out the video available at the bottom of this link).

DreamScene lets you configure a video as a wallpaper. So, instead of static wallpapers, you can have dynamic wallpapers. Now, whether you decide to go for a 3D virtual world type background or you include your home video, it’s up to you.

This extra has been in the news for some time but we were waiting for it to be released before we decided to cover it. As of last week, it has been formally made available for Windows Vista Ultimate users to download and install.

There is some great content available out of the box in the release to start you off. You can also download more from http://dream.wincustomize.com. Or create your own as well.

Of course, a lot of serious computer users might not find this as exciting (some of us don’t even have wallpapers). But this is just the thing for those who like to have pretty wallpapers on their desktops. Also, we think that this does help a lot in breaking the monotony that can seep in from working long hours on a computer.

If you are running DreamScene, we would love to hear comments about your experience.

Microsoft has finally come out and talked about their plans about the much awaited and anticipated release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

The company announced a release sometime in the first quarter of 2008. The company also announced that this service pack does not contain a lot of new features, though it does have a few that a lot of users have been requesting for such as the ability to encrypt hard disk partitions.

Though a lot of people have had a chance to go through the service pack already, either through the leaked copy last month; or through the beta preview that is available to some users.

Microsoft has also announced the availability of a beta later this year. It plans to release the beta to 10000 users for testing.

Interestingly enough, even after the announcement, there are no updates available on the Windows Service Pack Road Map page (at the time of writing this post, the last updated date shows March 28, 2007).

We at VistaBlogged love our Windows Vista and, if for nothing else, we are eagerly awaiting this service pack for all the performance enhancements that it promises. Of course, if problems such as those reported by Loyd are fixed, it will be bonus.