Microsoft’s new operating system, which won’t arrive for consumers until early next year, has a new collaboration feature that allows laptops to share information with other nearby machines.

The underlying technology is known as “People Near Me” and is being used by Microsoft for its own software projects and by other developers. The company has built one program based on it into Vista–Windows MeetingSpace–that lets people share and view files.

Full story. It’s peer to peer, as in it requires WiFi but not internet access. That could be very cool. Though if it’s anything like their moves in MSN Messenger land, where they block ‘potentially unsafe files’, ie. anything they feel like, then it will be stupid.