Boston (MA) - Microsoft Windows Vista will contain a feature called the Restart Manager, that will enable applications to be restored to their last viable state after a user logs off the system, after placing a system on standby, or following a system crash. Today at TechEd 2006, product managers Elsie Nallipogu and David Zipkin demonstrated this and other features they claim will dramatically improve the reliability of the operating system going forward.
In demonstrations which involved running a couple of tricks that could intentionally cause Vista and its applications to crash - using methods whose publicity by means of this session was met with skepticism from at least one attendee - Zipkin and Nallipogu showed how their company was working on methodologies that would make crashes and hangs far less significant events than they are today, mainly by virtue of reducing, if not eliminating, the loss factor. For instance, Nallipogu triggered a process which caused Word 2007 to crash. In response, Restart Manager now not only asks the user if she'd like to continue to wait while Windows does nothing (a rather nagging option in today's Windows XP), but also gives her the alternative of trying to restart the application...without restarting the OS.
