The Windows shell Team is putting the final touches on windows Vista. This aspect has been brought to the attention of the public by Nick White, Microsoft Program Manager, and is a subtle way of revealing that Vista is on the last yards toward a touch-down that will be synonymous with RTM. The fact that the Windows Shel Team is tunning up Vista's design is illustrative of the advanced status of finalization the operating system is in.

There is another subliminal message here. As McAfee and Symantec are at Microsoft's jugular for the kernel lockdown in Vista, the Redmond Company is preoccupied with design features. This shows determination on Microsoft's part not to open Vista's core to outsiders. The Redmond Company is even enjoying a range of support for its decision.

"Apple does it. Why not Microsoft? By not allowing anything to run at the same privilege level as the kernel, and by shutting down the kernel if anything messes with it, Microsoft is fielding a much more robust system than it did with XP, which allowed all kinds of kernel modifications by software partners and, by extension, hackers," argued Roger Kay, president of research group Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Click here to get a larger preview of the latest alterations introduced to My Computer. The Release Candidate 1 graphics have undergone an isolated face lift. Just the System Properties and the Map Network Drive icons have been affected.

Also, this link will enable a closer view on the overhauled icons in the Folder Options dialog box. In Vista Release Candidate 1, these icons have suffered a migration from windows XP. Build 5728 changed this aspect with fresh icons.

The last design aspect i want to point out is related to the user profile. "C:Users" profiles now comprise blue-style icons for Documents, Favorites, Music, Saved Games, Videos, Desktop, Downloads, Links, Pictures and Searches. Basically all the system directories involved in data management according to user profiles.