The Digital Locker Preview (it may not be it’s final name, we’ll have to wait and see) is a new e-commerce site provided by Microsoft which enables downloads and download management straight to your machine. It’s essentially a download manager, with a locker storage area for your downloads. It also keeps tabs of what you have downloaded and gives you options to burn them to CD so that you don’t have to download them again. See the Digital Locker as a storage for downloads from Windows Marketplace. As the slogan says, it manages the software you buy online.

As you can sign in with your Passport account, it enables you to check downloads and the status from your machine, but also see what you’ve downloaded from any Vista machine out there. Some of the features in Digital Locker are as follows:

Shopping cart: you can buy as much software as you want and download it all in one go, or if you’ve purchased it and don’t have enough bandwidth or the time, you can download it another time.

Personal information manager: enabling you to save personal bank information such as card details securely, so you can transfer it to another machine or need to reinstall software.

Windows Live ID Network: runs seamlessly with your Windows Live ID so you can sign-in and sign-out from the locker whenever you like.

 There is a demonstration relating to this article. Click here to view it.

Updated for Windows Vista RTM
You can now access the Digital Locker by either downloading it from the website (Windows XP only) or go to Start , Control Panel, Programs and Features, then View your digital locker.