At DigitalLife this year, the Certified for Windows Vista program celebrates its 1 year anniversary. In 1 year, over 2,000 products from numerous vendors have received the Certified for Windows Vista logo. Windows Marketing Manager (and Certified for Windows Vista guru) Ben Reed takes some time to show us Microsoft's booth at DigitalLife this year as well as some new Certified for Windows Vista devices making their debut this year.

Video: Microsoft at DigitalLife 2007

Here are some of the devices Ben showcased in his video for you to check out:

• Gateway One
• Canon PowerShot SD750 (I own this camera and it's awesome)
• Memento 100 Wireless Digital Picture Frame
• Canon HV20
• HP DV9000 Series Laptop
• Buffalo Wireless-N Nfiniti Dual Band Router

It is great to see on top of the new Extenders for Windows Media Center that there is even more devices in the pipeline designed to take advantage of Windows Vista's many features.

If you own a Certified for Windows Vista device - leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you about your device!

On September 28th, users of Windows Media Center for Windows Vista (in the U.S. at this time) will see a new option under "TV + Movies" - the beta version of Internet TV. Internet TV Beta streams high-quality video content from MSN Video ( which just relaunched with new features and enhancements) through the internet to Windows Media Center.  I got an opportunity to take an early look at Internet TV and want to share my experience.

When first launched - Internet TV took me to the Top Picks category. Internet TV consists of 6 main categories: Top Picks, Movies, Music, Entertainment, Sports, and News. These categories have sub-categories or "sections" in which content is divided into:

Top Picks: Top Picks are the top picks of content from all 6 categories. Top picks from movie trailers to concerts to TV shows are located here. There is some great picks here to check out like the Halo 3 "Believe" trailer (one of the coolest trailers ever) and the trailer to the upcoming Batman sequel The Dark Knight.

Movies: Here is where I was able to check out movie trailers to movies currently at the box office as well as movies that are "coming soon" and on DVD. If you are looking to head out to a movie and want to see what is at the box office - you can easily fire up Internet TV to quickly check out some trailers before heading out.

Music: Under music, I was able to check out concerts from artists like John Mayer, Maroon 5, Snoop Dogg, Chris Cornell, and Velvet Revolver. The concerts are pretty sweet. You also can watch top music videos. I've never seen the music video to the Bee Gees song "Stayin' Alive" until today. I also checked out "Rockstar" by Nickelback and "Last Fight" by Velvet Revolver.

Entertainment: With the Entertainment category you get complete TV show episodes such as "Arrested Development". I was able to view the shows by channels - with channels such as A&E, bio, The History Channel, NBC Today, Food Network, HGTV, DIY, National Geographic, Fine Living and MSN TV. Under MSN TV I discovered clips to some top TV shows like "Heroes" and the new "Bionic Woman". It is nice to see short clips from shows - especially if you might be interested in checking out some of these shows. There is also a section called "Shorts" where you can view short videos from places such as iFilm.

Sports: Sports fans will love this section. I was able to view clips from the latest games across the board. And there are dedicated sections for NFL news and NCAA Football.

News: This section consists of news clips from the latest current events. There is a section dedicated to top news as well as the 2008 election. Those who are watching the 2008 election closely will find the dedicated election section quite nice.

All the content loaded up in high quality and looked quite nice. There was some brief time in accessing the content as it loads or buffers but once the content is playing - it's playing in some pretty high quality. The content is designed and optimized for broadband streaming so having a broadband connection is required for the best results. I was also able to use my Xbox 360 acting as an Extender to use Internet TV as well. The new Media Center Extenders from D-Link, Linksys, HP and Niveus Media announced today all support Internet TVso you can watch the content on TV sets around your home.

Internet TV is beta and should show up in Windows Media Center for users with Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate on September 28th. During the beta trial, the Media Center team will experiment with the content on offer, and with advertising. At this time, Internet TV is available to users in the U.S.

Earlier today, Nick and Barry announced the release of the Ultimate Extra Windows DreamScene. Windows DreamScene lets Windows Vista Ultimate users choose full-motion video as their desktop wallpaper.

After installing the final release of Windows DreamScene, I was prompted to download the Windows DreamScene Content Pack Favorites. With Windows DreamScene, you get a standard set of 4 DreamScenes to use on your desktop. The Windows DreamScene Content Pack adds 4 more new DreamScenes for your desktop. Here is a video I created of my desktop PC running several of the new DreamScenes:

Video: Windows DreamScene Released - New DreamScenes

The glowing Windows Vista orb can be downloaded as a Windows Vista Ultimate wallpaper at the Windows Ultimate website. The glowing Windows Vista orb DreamScene is my favorite. The waterfall DreamScene was shown off during the demos at CES last January.

On top of the Windows DreamScene Content Pack Favorites - you can also download (and share) "dreams" over on Stardock's Dream Gallery.

What is your favorite Windows DreamScene?

Today Microsoft is releasing the Beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 which was announced by Nick White few weeks ago. I'd like to take the opportunity to share my very own experiences with Windows Vista SP1 Beta running on several PCs of my own.

I decided to test SP1 on a variety of hardware which allows me to test a variety of scenarios:

• Desktop PC (Custom-made) running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit.
• Laptop (HP tx1000) running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

The most common way the user will get SP1 will be through Windows Update. That is how I installed SP1 on the HP tx1000. Before getting to the SP1, a series of 3 prerequisites had to be installed first (It was 3 for me since I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate, but users who aren't running Ultimate or Enterprise will only have 2 to install since BitLocker is not included in the other Windows Vista SKUs).  I talked to Product Manager David Zipkin who explained what these prerequisites are for. The first prerequisite includes updates to the servicing stack. The second prerequisite is an update for BitLocker-capable PCs (Windows Vista Enterprise and Windows Vista Ultimate) to ensure proper servicing of Bitlocker. And the third and final prerequisite includes some updates to Windows, necessary to install and uninstall the service pack.

With me being a power user, I went into the Windows Update control panel to install the service pack and prerequisites manually but most users have Windows Update configured to automatically install updates and so the prerequisites-like other updates-will automatically install, typically overnight.

Once the prerequisites are installed, you will then be able to proceed with updating to SP1 via Windows Update. David told me that Microsoft also intends to release some of these prerequisite updates ahead of the service pack, as part of normal monthly updates, so you shouldn't see all these when you install the Service Pack.

When SP1 shows up in Windows Update, it does so as an "important update" and gives a size range from 51MB - 679.6MB. For me, the download of the service pack through Windows Update occurred relatively fast so I assume the size of SP1 is more on the lower end rather than the high. While SP1 is installing, I was able to continue working without any issue. Once SP1 finishes installing, Windows Update alerted me it must restart to finish the installation, allowing me to finish up my work to restart my PC.

On my Desktop PC, I decided to give the standalone installer for SP1 a try. The standalone installer is the version of SP1 offered as a single downloadable file in x86 and x64 flavors. Since I am running at 64-bit on my desktop PC, I chose the x64 standalone installer for SP1.The standalone installer is mainly used by IT administrators in a corporate network environment to roll out via SMS or other 3rd party management tools. In the case of Windows Vista SP1, the size of the standalone installer is noticeably larger than previous Service Packs in part due to the fact it accommodates for the 36 basic languages supported Windows Vista and all Windows Vista SKUs. This should make it easier for IT administrators to roll SP1 out to PCs running different languages on different SKU's on their network. 1 file does it all. My experience installing SP1 with the standalone installer versus installing SP1 through Windows Update was pretty much the same, except the standalone installer also took care of installing the prerequisite packages for me.

With Windows Vista SP1, there have been several improvements to my user experience I think are worth sharing. The first thing I noticed after installing SP1 was the logon experience when logging into Windows Vista. In entering my password, and logging into my account, I noticed improvements to responsiveness that weren't there before. On my desktop PC (which is joined to a domain) the improvements to the logon experience are even more noticeable. The delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE and getting the password prompt is pretty much gone.

After logging in to my PC - visually I saw no changes to the desktop shell. However, I did take notice to some minor tweaks to the UI in a few areas after some digging around. For example, the Search option has been removed from the Start menu.  More on this later...

There is also a new option in Windows Vista's Disk Defragmenter allowing you to choose which volumes you would like to defragment.  On my desktop PC, I have two drives. With the changes noted here - I was able to choose specifically to defragment my second harddrive. This worked great.

And in the BitLocker Control Panel - users of Windows Vista Enterprise and Ultimate are now able to choose which drives to encrypt. Previously, the user was able to only choose the drive that contains Windows Vista (the boot partition).

Outside these minor tweaks to specific areas of UI - I didn't see much new in the way of UI in SP1.

I've also taken notice to improvements in overall responsiveness of my PCs. Improvements were also noticeable in resuming from Hibernation or Sleep on both my desktop PC and laptop running SP1. I discovered copying files from one directory to another is a bit faster. And on my laptop - battery life seems to be improved since running SP1. I have also noticed that transferring files to my shares on my Windows Home Server are a bit faster than they were previously without SP1. Overall performance in accessing my mapped network shares is improved as well. I store quite a bit of data on my Windows Home Server so this was a huge plus for me. These are just some of the performance improvements I've seen running SP1 so far.

Back in June, I wrote about my experience running a dual-monitor setup with Windows Vista. Several readers commented on issues about connecting an external monitor up to a laptop running Windows Vista. SP1 includes improved reliability in connecting an external monitor to a laptop. Users can expect a better experience connecting an external monitor to their laptops as I've had a much better experience myself.

My wireless network experience is improved on my laptop. Prior to SP1, I had been experiencing issues in losing connectivity on my wireless home network and having to repair the connection (especially after resuming from Sleep or Hibernation). Since SP1, I've not had to repair my connection once.

After upgrading to SP1 on my two PCs, I've had no issues with any of my applications. On my HP tx1000, the VeriSoft Fingerprint software and HP Pavilion Webcam both continue to work great. Certified for Windows Vista apps Trend Micro AntiVirus 2007 and CorelDraw X3 also continue to work great as well. All of the new Windows Live betas released a few weeks ago (including the new Windows Live installer) work as advertised. Even the Windows Home Server Connector Console continues to work great.

Microsoft has recently published a KB article outlining changes to Windows Vista's desktop search in SP1 but I'd like to elaborate a little bit based on my own experience with the changes. Windows Vista SP1 allows the user to change their default desktop search provider from the built-in Windows Desktop Search that ships with Windows Vista to another 3rd party desktop search provider. As noted above, the Search option has been removed from the right side of the Start menu. Users will also notice "See all results" has disappeared when doing a search via the Start menu. Instead, you will see "Search Everywhere". Search Everywhere will launch whatever is the user's default desktop search program.  In Windows Explorer, users will also see a "Search Everywhere" option in the toolbar as well.

These are just some personal notes on experiences I've had so far. Moving forward with SP1, expect to hear more on my experiences in the coming months. Microsoft is continuing to improve the user experience with Windows Vista both by SP1 and updates from Windows Update. Several months ago I wrote about how much I love Windows Update. Windows Update continues to offer updates to the user experience. Microsoft continues to pump device driver updates out to users through Windows Update as well. For me, it is exciting to see Microsoft continuing to utilize the potential Windows Update has in improving the Windows Vista user experience and SP1 is just one part in that plan.

Here on the Windows Experience Blog, I use Soapbox on MSN Video to embed and share all my videos for my blog posts. Tonight, the Soapbox and MSN Video Team has launched MSN Video V4 with new features to Soapbox worth taking note of:

• Enhanced Copyright violation. Soapbox users will now be explicated told one of their videos has been flagged for copyright violation versus previously the video would simply not show up without any sort of message.
  
  
• Improved encoding time. This is a HUGE plus for me because it lets me get videos uploaded faster when writing a blog post. Previously, it took quite a bit of time to get a video completely uploaded to be embedded into a blog post.
  
  
• New Mini-Showcase. The Mini-Showcase is a new area on the landing page where the video team editors can show you what's hot on the site. I'm hoping to get one of my videos flagged for the Mini-Showcase sometime in the next few months.

There are a few more notable changes to take into account. When going to soapbox.msn.com - you will be directed to MSN Video. Soapbox is now directly part of MSN Video. In the menu you will see a new addition of "Soapbox user videos" where you can access user generated content from Soapbox including your profile via a new drop down menu. Also: you will note that MSN Video now consumes the most out of the browser window instead of being a fixed width at the center.

Congratulations to the MSN Video Team for pushing out an excellent new release of MSN Video and Soapbox and I look forward to continuing to use the service to share videos with my readers.

Users using the new Windows Live Photo Gallery beta can also now publish videos directly to Soapbox on MSN Video. This feature continues to work absolutely wonderful for me especially with the improved encoding time from tonight's release.   

Be sure to keep your eyes peeled on the Soapbox on MSN Video Blog for more on tonight's update.

On Monday, Nick and I flew out to San Francisco to attend AMD's Premiere Event announcing their quad-core Opteron processor. With Intel's quad-core hardware and now AMD moving full speed ahead - the era of quad-core processing is here!

Prior to the event, we met up with Featured Community members Michael Reyes, John Obeto, and Carlos Echenique to attend a blogger meet-up with some folks from AMD. Michael is from the website HardwareGeeks , John owns and runs the website SmallBizVista, and Carlos runs the website PlanetAMD64. I also had the huge pleasure of meeting Alessandro Perilli from the website Virtualization.info. Alessandro is one of the leading bloggers in blogging on virtualization technology on the web.

At the blogger meet-up, we were all surprised by a visit from AMD's CEO Hector Ruiz.

At the Herbst International Exhibit Hall, AMD had several demo stations set up for folks to play with quad-core PCs. Nick had a chance to play Midway's upcoming game Stranglehold powered by AMD's Phenom quad-core processor. AMD had several different demo stations including one demoing some very impressive video-editing capabilities.

Later, we were all bused over to the Letterman Digital Arts Center for the launch event. The Letterman Digital Arts Center was created by George Lucas and LucasFilm on the grounds of the Presidio. The Letterman Digital Arts Center houses many of the LucasFilm divisions (such as ILM) and is a state-of-the-art digital entertainment facility. When arriving, we knew right away we were at a LucasFilm facility as we were greeted by some familiar faces:

We then made our way into the Letterman Digital Arts Center where we were directed into their 298-seat, state-of-the-art, THX-certified screening room equipped for digital projection. It was a very impressive theater room. The event kicked off with AMD's Hector Ruiz announcing the Opteron quad-core processor and then introducing LucasFilm producer Rick McCallum to talk about LucasFilm's partnership with AMD.

Rick showcased a really neat video of the special effects ILM did for the movie Transformers. Take a look at the video:

Video: AMD Barcelona Launch: ILM Video

Overall, I shot over 9GB of HD video footage from the event. Using Windows Movie Maker, I spliced the video into segments and uploaded the special effects video above to Soapbox. If I had a quad-core processor, editing and rendering video such as my HD footage would be quite a bit faster and more efficient. Quad-core processors will offer quite a bit of advantage to Windows Vista users as they hit the market as they will enable the user to do much more with digital video, sound, and even games.

Special thanks to AMD for having us out for the event.

Along with updated betas for Windows Live Messenger 8.5, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Live Writer - users can now install and test the second beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery. Back in June, Microsoft announced Windows Live Photo Gallery as the successor to Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista with a closed beta program. Starting today - anyone can now choose to install and try out Windows Live Photo Gallery.

This new release of Windows Live Photo Gallery offers some impressive enhancements over the previous beta as well as the existing Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista.

First off, users get improved color adjustment and cropping capabilities for fixing their photos. These enhancements allow users to easily make changes to their photos before sharing them. You can now adjust the detail of your image by sharpening your image up or change the levels of shadow and highlights in the image's exposure. Under "Adjust exposure" users now have a Histogram of their photos. This will help in adjusting the right levels for making your images look the best. 

A new feature has been added to Windows Live Photo Gallery that will make many users happy (I for one am crazy about this feature). Users can now right-click on an image file to resize that image. You can even select multiple images and resize them together (batch resize was a popular feature request by users).

I do a ton of resizing images and being able to do this right from Windows Live Photo Gallery is a deal thing for me.

With shooting a ton of photos, not all of those photos turn out to be worth anything. So why import them onto the PC? With Windows Photo Gallery I was unable to preview and pick and choose the images I want to import off my camera. With Windows Live Photo Gallery you can with the new Photo and Video Import tool.

The Photo and Import Tool is a lot smarter in Windows Live Photo Gallery. It will list your images by date and allow you to enter names and tags for different photos on different dates.

After importing your images and fixing them all up - Windows Live Photo Gallery lets you publish those photos to your Windows Live Space. This makes it incredibly easier to share photos with friends and family. In importing photos to your Windows Live Space, you can create an entirely new album of photos or add the photos to existing albums already on your Windows Live Space.

You'll notice that Windows Live Photo Gallery supports the recently announced new optimize feature for your photos when publishing them to Windows Live Spaces. By choosing to "Optimize photos for printing" - your photos will be uploaded to Windows Live Spaces at a higher quality so that you can either print your own photos or order prints of your photos online. Users can also enjoy impressive full screen slide shows from Windows Live Spaces after uploading higher quality images through Windows Live Photo Gallery. Through Windows Live Spaces, you can take advantage of their new partnership with HP Snapfish (U.S. only currently - with more markets expected to come online later). Click here to read a bit from Windows Live Spaces Product Manager Chris Keating on Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Spaces.

Users are not only able to publish photos to Windows Live Spaces, but also videos to Soapbox on MSN Video.

Another on my favorite new features is the ability to create a panoramic photo. You can take a series of photos and stitch them together to create a panoramic photo. Here is a panoramic photo of the parking lot at my apartment complex (I stitched 8 photos together to create it):

If you love Windows Photo Gallery - you're definitely going to love Windows Live Photo Gallery. .

Keep your eyes on the Microsoft Photography and Video Blog. Matter a fact, Program Manager Scott Dart has posted pointing people to where they can download Windows Live Photo Gallery. Expect to hear more from Scott and his team very soon.

In testing out the latest Windows Live Photo Gallery release, be sure to submit feedback using feedback.live.com. This is the best place to submit bugs you may found.

Today Chris Jones, Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Experience Program Management, has announced the availability today of new betas for the new wave of Windows Live applications. These new beta releases showcase Microsoft's goal in releasing the new Windows Live applications together. These new betas are being released with a brand new unified installer for the Windows Live suite. Users will be able to download a single installer for the Windows Live suite in which they can pick and choose the specific Windows Live apps they want to install on their PC's.

To showcase the new installer for the Windows Live Suite - I've got a video demo on how the new installer works. Check it out:

Video: Windows Live Installer Demo

The unified installer is an impressive addition to Windows Live and is a much easier install experience for the user.

Shipping with today's betas is also the broad availability of the new Windows Live Photo Gallery. Previously, Windows Live Photo Gallery was a closed beta. With the new unified installer for the Windows Live Suite, users can now choose to install Windows Live Photo Gallery. I'll be talking more about Windows Live Photo Gallery in separate post very soon.

The Windows Live suite currently consists of Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Writer, and Windows Live Photo Gallery with Windows Live OneCare Family Safety. These applications bridge the gap between the Windows Vista PC and the Windows Live web services. Windows Live Mail allows you to sync your email and contacts from Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Photo Gallery lets you publish your images to Windows Live Spaces. Overall, the Windows Live suite is designed to extend your Windows experience by tapping into Windows Live. Of course choice comes with the Windows Live Suite as well. You can use Windows Live Mail to check any POP3 or IMAP email account and Windows Live Writer supports a great variety of online blogging services.

Give the Windows Live Suite a try today.

Update 1:16PM PDT - Looks like the Windows Live installer page is now online. Give it a shot!