As I'm sure you already know, Microsoft Vista is on the way! Microsoft projects that all five versions of Vista will be available by mid-2006, and if that holds this will be the longest time period ever between versions of Windows.

Yes, that's right - I said "all five versions". Microsoft says that past versions of their OS, such as Windows XP, were based more on hardware type than how people actually used their PCs. MS says that this will not be the case with Vista, and to that end they're going to offer two separate versions of Vista to businesses and two to home PC users. In this article, we'll take a quick overview of Microsoft Vista Business features.

Windows Vista Business is offered as a solution for all companies, regardless of size. In answer to security concerns about past Microsoft products, Vista Business will offer built-in solutions against malware. And for those of you (okay, us) who never quite have all the information on their PCs backed up properly, Vista will not only help you to resolve catastrophic failures before they occur, but new features Windows Backup and Volume Shadow Copy will help to ensure that you never have to pray for a hard drive to come back to life because you're behind on your backups!

Windows Vista Enterprise will bring these features and more to enterprise-level networks. One of these is Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption, designed to encrypt an entire hard drive. BitLocker will help prevent the loss of your organization's intellectual property even if the PC it's on is stolen.

To start learning more about Vista, visit www.microsoft.com/windowsvista. Regardless of whether your company has any plans to move to Vista, you owe it to yourself and your career to keep up with the latest technologies- and that includes Microsoft!