Vista embraces RSS in a big way — subcribing to feeds are built into IE, and there’s a nice gadget for displaying feeds on the desktop as well. It’s too bad, though, that the tools aren’t more powerful.

Subscribing to a feed in IE is simplicity itself. Just click a button to see the feed, click another to subscribe, and you’re done. To view your feeds, go to the Favorites Center, click Feeds, and you’ll be able to read them. The reader is simple as well, although not nearly as fully featured as a standalone reader like FeedDemon. And in some ways, even Sage, Firefox’s RSS extention, is better as well.

Also nice is the gadget that displays your feeds right on the desktop. Butmore on gadgets in blogs to come.