Part 5: Windows XP vs. Vista: BitLocker & Color Management

008: BitLocker Drive Encryption
BitLocker Drive Encryption similar but not to Windows XP Encrypting File System (EFS), encrypts your entire hard drive and usually used with the famous (and I hate) Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Trusted Platform Modules are special microchips that supports advanced security (i.e. Thumbnail Readers, Retinal Scanners, or even the new on-the-fly Seagate Momentus 5400 FDE.2). This feature (the BitLocker) I can see very handy with laptops, where security and data are absolutely important to be confidential otherwise useless to the average user.

Users that use this technology with or without the famous Encrypting File System should note that BitLocker or similar technologies will slow your computer’s performance down to a halt – especially with high disk fragmentation + system restore + windows defender + indexing +++ etc.

Windows XP File Encryption
Windows XP - File Encryption

Windows Vista BitLocker
Windows Vista - BitLocker

009: Color Management
At last something more interesting than XP. . . Vista incorporated the Color Management separately as a Control Panel applet. As a graphic artist in photography and web design I typically use these settings when syncing up my monitor, scanner and printer’s color matching. In other words, what Color Management does is color synchronize what I see on my screen, scanner and what colors are going to be printed to my photo quality printer. There’s also another tool I use in conjunction with my old 20 inch Apple Macintosh monitor called PowerStrip – which allows me to manually set temperature, hue, brightness, contrast and color, etc.

Color Management is not to be confused with DirectX Overlay – which is a topic of it’s own. Typically overlay options are for playing back DVD’s in hardware acceleration and those color settings are part of another system property all together.

Windows XP Color Management
Windows XP - Color Management