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Software giant Microsoft released Windows Vista to
consumers on 30 January 2007. The new version of the
Windows operating system has been more than five years
in development and much hangs on its success.
One of the biggest changes in Vista will be obvious
as soon as users set eyes on the main display. Gone
are the flat Windows panes in favour of a 3D display
called Aero. The flexibility of this will be familiar
to anyone who has played a recent PC game. In this inteface
the separate panes for each program you have running
can be displayed in different ways and at different
angles. They can even be stacked or staggered.
As the interface is hardware driven if users do not
have a decent graphics card they may not see all the
improvements. To get the most out of it Microsoft recommends
a graphics card that works with DirectX9 and has a minimum
128MB of graphics memory. Microsoft also say that PC's
need at least 512mb main memory but they recommend 1gb
or more!
Without this graphical ability, Windows Vista will
look very like Windows XP does now.
In some respects Windows Vista helps Microsoft catch
up with many of the technologies that rivals, such as
Apple and Google, have been touting long before now.
A case in point is the instant search tool found in
Vista. Searching in Windows XP is an exercise in frustration
and the only way to do it better was to download and
install an add-on program. With Vista the search tools
are constantly running, logging what you are doing and
what you are doing it with. The result is that, as you
type in search terms, Vista starts populating a list
of what you might be looking for.
Not only can you search for files you can look for
applications too. No longer do you have to remember
where something is on a menu, the search tool will take
you there. It is an acknowledgement of how important
searching has become. The search tool can be refined
to only look for applications, specific file types or
just on the net.
One of the many features that Microsoft is trumpeting
in Vista is the improvements it makes to the security
of your computer.
Over the last few years Windows XP has been updated
with a lot of add-ons and updates that try to make it
less prone to being compromised. Vista continues this
trend and comes ready fitted with a few security programs
including anti-spyware and a firewall.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, which ships with Vista,
will also have on-board an anti-phishing system that
tries to warn people when they stray on to a fake site
and are about to unwittingly share confidential information
with the bad guys.
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