Windows Vista Home Basic Features

Easily search and find everything on your PC and the Internet

Instantly find information on your computer—including documents, e-mails, photos, and even music files—with Instant Search, which is integrated throughout Windows Vista.

Search anywhere, even from the Start menu.

Searching for information on the Internet is easier than ever with Internet Explorer 7, which includes web searching right from the browser, with no additional toolbars necessary. Tabbed browsing also enables you to simultaneously browse multiple webpages in one window.

See your open browser windows on a single page.

See the information you care about instantly with Windows Sidebar and gadgets, which bring real-time information, like weather and news, directly to your desktop.

Flexible organization features make it simple to instantly find and view your files any way you want.

Relive a lifetime of memories using Windows Photo Gallery. It's now easier to download photos from your digital camera and then organize, edit, view, and share them with family and friends.

Quickly view, edit, and share images with Windows Photo Gallery.

Get up and running quickly using Windows Easy Transfer to automatically copy your files, photos, music, e-mail, and settings from your old PC to your new Windows Vista-based PC.

Windows Vista works in the background to take care of itself, giving you a better and faster computing experience. Using new performance self-tuning and diagnostics technologies, Windows Vista can improve the responsiveness of the applications you use most often and help to decrease file download times.

Windows SuperFetch helps make your PC run faster and enables your applications to load faster.

Windows Vista includes new self-healing technology that can identify problems and fix them so you can keep system disruptions to a minimum.

Windows Vista contains built-in diagnostics that look for hardware failures, network problems, and slow performance issues so they can be resolved before they affect your productivity.

The safest and most secure version of Windows ever

Windows Defender helps automatically safeguard your PC against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software.

The automatic protection of Windows Defender helps you avoid unwanted software.

With dynamic security protection, Internet Explorer 7 helps you achieve a higher level of security protection than ever before when browsing the web.

The anti-phishing technology in Internet Explorer 7 helps protect you from fraudulent websites that attempt to steal your personal information.

Unique to Windows Vista is Internet Explorer protected mode, which makes browsing the web even safer by helping prevent unwanted malicious software downloads.

With Parental Controls, you can manage the rules for your children's computer use. You can set time limits for use, and also manage their access to the web and to PC games.

Using Standard user accounts, you can confidently allow your children to use your PC, and lessen the risk that they will install malicious software or make harmful changes to the PC.

Use basic backup features to safeguard your files—priceless digital photos, music, movies, documents, and more.

Some product features are only available in certain editions of Windows Vista and may require advanced or additional hardware.