Looks like Windows Vista will have a cool new feature with a cool name. The word comes from ZDNet Australia:
Windows Vista will include a new technology known as Freeze Dry designed to maintain application states and unsaved documents even when patches are automatically applied and PCs are rebooted.
Speaking at the Australian Tech Ed conference on the Gold Coast in Queensland this week, senior product manager Amy Stephan offered a preview of the Freeze Dry technology.
Many IT managers plan to automatically install patches and updates on machines during periods when they are inactive, such as overnight or on weekends. However, as some patches require machines to reboot, users who leave documents open and unsaved run the risk of losing that data if the machine is automatically updated.
Freeze Dry eliminates that problem by automatically saving application state and documents and then restoring them once the system restarts, Stephan said.
This is one of the biggest complaints people have about Automatic Updates as implemented in Windows XP. If you forget to save a file and leave it open overnight when your machine gets an update, you might find that file gone in the morning. It’ll be interesting to see how well this works.
Ed Bott (@ wordpress.com) 