In working to implement these goals Microsoft faced some tough decisions, especially in the security area. The software company also took the opportunity to make some breaks with the past, such as de-emphasizing the classic File menus. Vista’s new user interface offers two primary levels (Aero and Basic) depending on your computer’s hardware configuration. Although many of the user controls are only mildly updated (mostly the look and feel), other areas, such as the settings and dialog boxes for configuring your wireless or peer network, have seen significant updates.

For many Windows users the most profound difference might simply be the addition of several new bundled applications, including Windows Defender, Sidebar, Meeting Space, Calendar, Photo Gallery, DVD Maker, Fax And Scan, Sync Center, Welcome Center, and a handful of diagnostic utilities. Bundled Windows apps receiving notable updates include Internet Explorer 7, Windows Mail (Outlook Express), Media Player 11, Movie Maker, Contacts (Address Book), Windows Easy Transfer (Files And Settings Transfer Wizard), Disk Defragmenter with scheduled background defragmentation, and Backup with scheduling to local or network hard drive or optical devices.

Safety First

Microsoft made security its top priority in Vista. The list of security protections is very long and frankly somewhat uninteresting. The company took no half measures; no baby steps. Users must provide their own antivirus programs, but other than that, Microsoft delivers what it strongly believes will be a significantly more secure operating system. Windows Defender, a welcome addition to Vista, has a real-time monitor that doesn’t nag you with pop-up boxes. The program also offers scheduled system scans. Windows Firewall has been strengthened to provide inbound and outbound protection (but very few outbound ports are blocked by default). Security Center warns you when your Internet security settings are too low.

Probably the most controversial security feature in Vista is UAC (User Account Control). Microsoft changed Windows’ login account privileges and worked hard to come up with processes that make it easier for people to work in accounts with fewer privileges. Because Microsoft did this, Vista installations will be much less vulnerable to malware or network intrusion. At press time, Microsoft was still working on refining UACs, but many beta testers were frustrated by frequent pop-up boxes asking them to confirm that they initiated an action. Some of the actions that required UAC confirmation in Beta 2 included very mundane tasks, such as placing icons on the Start menu, deleting icons from the Programs area of the Start menu, and placing Desktop icons in the Recycle Bin. A long list of Control Panels also spur the UAC prompt. Even if you’re logged in to Vista with computer administrator privileges, you see these prompts in Vista Beta 2. The idea behind UAC is perfectly sound, and the rationale behind the need for confirmation prompts is understandable. But the current user experience is not acceptable. Microsoft announced that it will be working to refine the experience for the next major prerelease of Vista.

New Eye On The Web

What’s fundamentally different in IE7 from previous versions is security. Running in Vista IE7 benefits from protected-mode browsing, which prevents IE from modifying user or system files and settings. So far we’ve noticed no reduction in the whole Web experience from protected-mode browsing; you’re just a lot safer from spyware. The new phishing filter in IE7 combines a Microsoft-managed database of known fraudulent Web sites with a check of sites that exhibit suspicious behavior. When you visit a known phishing site, IE7 automatically navigates you away from the site and displays a warning. IE7 also provides basic tabbed browsing, automatic discovery of and subscription to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, shrink-to-fit Web page printing, and page zooming.

IE7 offers well-considered, but mostly modest, feature updates that take a minimalist approach to plugging the glaring holes where competitors Firefox and Opera leapt ahead in recent years. The best change is the thorough security update. Firefox and Opera are relatively secure mostly because the bad stuff on the Internet just isn’t aimed at either browser (yet). Vista’s IE7 will surely be the most secure Web browser on the planet. But it will also still have that bull’s-eye painted on its back.

The Aero Interface

Microsoft's new "space-age" user interface goes by the name of Aero. And marketing aside, Aero is a significant step up. The video subsystem in Windows hasn’t received an order-of-magnitude upgrade since, well, ever. And that’s really the big news. Vista’s graphics setup is designed to make use of onboard memory and 3D processors of advanced graphics cards, whose power has previously only been utilized by games. The new UI is able to rapidly render crisp, vector-based images, transparency and translucent blurring, effortless 3D rotations, instantaneous scaling of images and fonts, reflections, shadows, live thumbnails, and several other effects. When you bake this new graphical horsepower into Windows’ user interface, it makes for a different, and altogether better, user interface—so long as you have the hardware to support. The main point to remember is that for the first time ever, these kind of effects are fast. You may dismiss them as so much eye candy, but you won’t be looking for the off button because they slow things down.

Forget about the technology for a second and check out some of the main features that Aero delivers:

Glass-like transparency. This is hard to imagine without seeing it, but the title bars and edges of all windows in the Vista Aero interface are transparent with blurriness, as if you were looking through dulled privacy glass. That means you can see through them to the Desktop or other program windows behind them. The Windows Sidebar (more on this later) is fully transparent, and the right side of the Start menu has the appearance of looking through black glass. The net effect is subtle, but it reduces the feeling of looking through a keyhole, especially when you have multiple windows open.

Live Taskbar thumbnails. Vista lets you pause your mouse pointer over program Taskbar tiles to see a live, pop-up thumbnail of the program's open window. If a movie is playing in one program, you’ll see the movie running in the thumbnail. (However, we couldn’t get the movie thing to work in Vista Beta 2, but it did work in earlier releases.) The feature is useful if you’re the kind of person who always has multiple windows open. The thumbnails let you visually sort through windows behind windows to find the one you want instead of trial-and-error Taskbar button clicking.

Flip and Flip 3D. Microsoft has two more options to help you quickly find open windows. Vista’s version of the ALT-TAB Task Switcher from earlier Windows versions shows live thumbnails of all open windows and the Desktop, which gives you an easy way to minimize all windows so you can access something on the Desktop. Flip 3D lines up all the open windows in a larger, left-to-right 3D stack, rotated at an angle that lets you see the window on top of the pile. To launch Flip 3D, you hold down the WINDOWS key and tap the TAB key. As you press and release the TAB key, Vista cycles through the windows, displaying a different window each time you release the key. (You can also use your mouse scroll wheel.) When you release the WINDOWS key, the program window at the forefront opens and Flip3D disappears.

Sidebar. One other key feature is the Sidebar, an optional, highly configurable column designed to house and display gadgets. Gadgets are single-purpose tools that deliver information, provide a specific functionality, or perform a basic task. Examples include a customizable analog clock, real-time stock market prices, CPU and memory usage, and a calculator. The good news is that the Sidebar is extremely well designed. You can turn it on or off, it can appear above or below application windows, and it can roll onto the screen when you summon it. You can drag gadgets directly onto your Desktop and skip the Sidebar if you want. Microsoft really thought through the Sidebar design, and it’s the only software maker (including Google and Apple) to get this right. The bad news is that at the time of this writing, there were only 21 gadgets available, and probably only half a dozen of those are useful to many users. Vista Sidebar Gadgets are also incompatible with Windows Live Gadgets. That part, Microsoft didn’t think through.

Integrated Desktop Search

Along with Aero, an important new aspect of Vista’s user interface is the integration of Desktop search features. Microsoft added a new background full-text search engine that works much better than its predecessor in WinXP. The software maker has also squeezed Search fields into the Start menu, Explorers, and many Microsoft programs and applications. Search is context-sensitive. When you enter criteria into the Search field in the Start Menu, for example, Windows aims to help you find and launch programs. Media Player's integrated Search feature looks for artists, albums, and songs. And if you conduct a search within the Control Panel, you can track down specific Control Panel names.

When you search within a folder window, Instant Search, Microsoft's name for this feature, takes on added functionality. In a folder the assumption is that you're looking for data primarily in your documents and media folders. You can name and save searches, launching them again and again. The saved searches will always display dynamic search results based on all the latest data on your system. The Advanced Search Pane option adds several ways to create more targeted or more complex searches to hone your results. It’s also possible to search your hard drive for other things besides user data. Vista’s search improvements are welcome changes.

Going Hollywood

Digital media and entertainment features, as in previous releases of Windows, have received a significant amount of attention in Vista. Particularly in the Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions, where Windows Movie Maker supports high-definition video and Windows Media Center supports high-definition, wide-screen displays. Windows Media Player 11 has a new network sharing feature that lets you share Media Libraries among the computers on your home network.

Microsoft has also significantly revised power management functionality and controls in Vista. In our tests Vista’s new Sleep mode may finally bring Windows into the 21st century. In Sleep mode, your notebook turns off in about three or four seconds; it takes about half that time for your notebook to come out of Sleep mode. We used Sleep to turn off a notebook PC. We then pulled the plug on the unit and left it set for 24 hours. When we turned the notebook back on, the battery still showed a 100% charge.

There are many other new power functions and settings in Vista; the most common are available in the Power Options Control Panel. It is here that you can control how your notebook reacts when you close its lid and determine what the power buttons do. You can decide after what timeframe your notebook enters Sleep mode and whether to require users to enter a password when the notebook comes out of that mode. You can also create, name, and save custom power-management settings. Advanced settings include a range of settings for hardware types and activities, including PCI Express, hybrid sleep, and media sharing. Vista’s battery meter gives you an estimate (hour/minute) as to how long your battery will last. The meter also lets you change your power plan.

If you use Vista, you’ll see improvements in security. Vista supports WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 [also known as 802.11i]), which makes it easier to configure protected wireless networks and makes it harder to accidentally connect to a fraudulent network. Network browsing, an Achilles’ heel of all previous Windows versions, is slightly better in Vista. Microsoft also touts improvements to its corporate roaming features, which lets employees store and access user data and settings on a Windows server and access that information from multiple computers. Vista adds the ability to incrementally sync files with Microsoft’s offline files and folders functionality, which speeds up the process of syncing data.

The feature that Microsoft has talked the most about in relation to mobile computing is its Mobility Center. The Mobility Center is a new Control Panel that includes settings mobile users commonly need: screen brightness, audio volume, battery status, turning wireless networking on and off, and managing external displays. The Brightness feature doesn’t seem to work on the notebooks in which we installed Vista; we probably need to install Vista-compatible drivers. The rest of the Mobility Center seems pretty ho-hum. Maybe the Mobility Center needs an icon in the System Tray or some other more prominent access method than Control Panel to make it more useful.

Finally, Microsoft has also upgraded the Tablet PC features in Vista. The handwriting-recognition features work better, according to Microsoft, because people using the technology can target specific recognition errors for retraining. There’s also a new set of gestures, called Pen Flicks, designed to speed up navigation and provide editing shortcuts. There’s a new AutoComplete feature, as well, that makes input faster and easier, and Vista adds touchscreen support.

When & How Much?

When will Vista finally become available? When will companies begin adopting it? And how much will it cost? Unfortunately, all those questions shift us into educated-guess mode.

At this writing, Microsoft was still saying that the Enterprise and Business versions of Vista would become available to volume-licensing business customers sometime in November. Microsoft also reported that Vista would ship to stores and be available from PC makers online and in stores sometime in January 2007.

It appears, though, that Microsoft may have pushed back the internal target date of the next prerelease version of the OS, Release Candidate 1, by four to six weeks. If everything goes well, and assuming that Microsoft’s Release Candidate 2 is the last widespread prerelease version of Vista, that delay will probably not change the stated ship dates. But if some large problem crops up requiring significant development time, Microsoft might have to bump the ship dates again. Because the software giant is already missing the holiday selling season with its consumer releases, slipping one or two more months into the first quarter of 2007 is not out of the realm of possibility.

It's unlikely that most companies will adopt Vista quickly. That's almost always the case with a new version of Windows, but it may be especially true with Vista. But make no mistake, this is still a very large upgrade of the Windows OS and it has specific hardware needs. Most companies will likely install Vista on a few test machines and work with it to get to know it, but they’re unlikely to order new Vista machines or upgrade existing hardware in great numbers. There is, however, one aspect of Vista that could entice some organizations to upgrade to Vista quickly: security. Any company with above-average security concerns might jump in with both feet by next summer. Many other companies will probably wait until 2008 and beyond.

Our guesses about price come down to one key point: Microsoft has never released a version of Windows that's tantamount to the Vista Ultimate Edition. Vista Ultimate contains all the features of the other Vista versions. The program is designed to appeal to power users and small-business people who want one PC to handle their business and leisure pursuits. We have to figure that Ultimate will be more expensive than WinXP Professional, probably by as much as $30 to $50. By the same token, Vista Basic might conceivably cost less than WinXP Home Edition, although that seems far less certain. We’ll have to wait for when Microsoft decides to announce pricing, which might not be until right before it ships Vista.

by Scot Finnie