Vista Solitaire

With Microsoft Vista due for a January 2007 consumer launch, you might be wondering what Microsoft's version of Klondike Solitaire is going to look like under the new operating system.

Here's a sneak peak at the new edition of the venerable game:

• The first image shows the new Games Explorer, which provides a front end not only for the games that are built in to Vista, but for new games that you download or purchase. The Games Explorer displays thumbnails of each of your games, along with details about the game.
• The second image shows one of the lush new backgrounds and the new card images in the game.
• The second image also shows as the new in-game hints system.
• The third image shows another solitaire skin.
• The new version of solitaire contains multiple deck choices, in which you not only get to choose the card background, but several entirely new complete decks. You can see two of them to the right, and old-style card graphics are also supposed to be available. No word on whether the game will support user-installed decks. I also do not know whether the card graphics are fixed-size bitmaps, or scalable vector images.
• The game will support multiple scoring systems. Not sure what these are yet.
• The game will offer the ability to save a game in progress and resume it later, right where you left off.
• There are also supposed to be some new end-game animations.
• The new version is supposed to support unlimited undo.

In addition to Klondike, Vista also includes updated versions of Freecell and Spider, with most of the same features as described above. There are apparently no new solitaire games included with Vista, which is something of a disappointment, since most prior major Windows releases had included new solitaire games, too. Perhaps that’s a sign that Vista is not as major of an update as Microsoft is making it out to be.