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Lately there has been much hype about the new Microsoft Windows OS (operating system) that is supposedly coming out sometime next year (rumored around the holiday season of 2006). Already there have been a few builds (or versions if you will) of Beta versions of Vista, the new OS. They have not been publicly available though, so only a select group were able to get their hands on a copy to test (or you had to be a subscriber to Microsoft’s Developer Program). If you look around on the internet there have been many other news sites posting about Vista and talking about each build as it comes out. So really it is not totally new news talking about Vista.

Right now though, I wanted to talk about the newest build, 5270, and also my first dip into the Vista world. Recently I was able to get my hands on a copy of the newest Vista build to try out and I was quite excited to check it out. I had a laptop that had XP loaded on it and really needed to be reloaded after months of abuse (lots of software testing and such), so I decided to load up Vista on the laptop.

Just to start from step one to give you an idea, the laptop specs are as follows:

• Intel Centrino 1.7 GHZ
• 512mb Ram
• 40gb HDD
• Built in Intel Graphics Card
• Designed for XP

The laptop runs XP Pro very fast and efficiently, and is not really a cheap one in specs, later you will find out why I say this.

After starting the install of Vista, it took about 2.5 Hours to install. Vista comes on a DVD and is quite a hefty install considering XP on the same laptop takes about 35 minutes. The installer is pretty straight forward, just setting up the name of the machine and such and then watching a progress bar go across the bottom of the screen for a few hours.

Next you are greeted with the windows desktop, looks a bit unique though because of the different icons and look. Very streamlined looking plus a neat collection of colors. It does take quite a while to boot Vista on this laptop and it is the only machine I have tried it on so far so I can not comment on if this is just because of the laptop specs (which as I said earlier, it shouldn’t  be as this is a fast laptop with XP).

The new look is quite interesting, there are many things and layouts that you are used to from the former OS’s, but there are many things that are different (like the new round start button and new look of all the icons). You can put Vista into the standard gray windows look like on 98/2000 machines, but still the icons are different.

Here you can see Device Manager that looks identical to Device Manager in XP:

The major difference that Vista brings is the main part of the Windows OS, the Explorer. You may not know it, but Explorer is not only Internet Explorer, it also is what you see when you browse through your My Documents, My Computer, Control Panel, and other areas in Windows. In Vista, this whole Explorer has been redone, which did not really happen as vastly in the switch between 95/98/2000/XP. The new Explorer is a bit more to get used to for us used to the soon to be "Old School" Explorer of past versions of Windows. Also, there are no more "My" prefixes, so now its just Computer, Documents, Pictures, Music, etc. Some of the differences in Explorer are how you can change the view of icons (as seen in the Demo Video at the end of this article), you can now just click on different areas in the path shown in the address bar to go there, there is a new reading pane that is like a preview pane but you can also preview things like text documents, the new layout without File, Edit, View, etc. menus, and a few other tweaks. Its confusing at first, but after awhile it grows on you and you get used to it. It also becomes quicker to navigate thanks to being able to just click on items in the address bar to go to them.

The new My Computer replacement "Computer":

Since Explorer was redesigned, so was Internet Explorer 7 that now has many new features like built in Tabbed Browsing (many will love this, although its not much for me as I do not used tabbed browsing in programs like Opera and Firefox), a panel view to see all the tabs, RSS reader to read RSS feeds right in Internet Explorer, better security features, a new layout, seemingly faster page loading, and some other tweaks. The internet explorer I tend to like very much, easy to use and quick, but at times a bit more complicated than IE 6 as there is more on screen. It follows the same look and feel as the other Explorer windows.

Here you can see MobilitySite and next to that, the panel view of the tabs:

To show off the new Explorer and Internet Explorer 7 I made a small movie with Wink (screen capture software). Note that since Wink had some compatibility problems, the start button is not shown in the shots for some reason. Also, to move through the movie use the Next and Previous buttons in the bottom right corner.

Click Here to see the Explorer Movie

A neat feature that Vista uses is that it detects the performance and details of your machine and uses that to define what you can do with the graphics features and the way the Explorer looks. If you have a high performance machine, you will be able to take advantage of a sleeker looking explorer, with transparency effects, new maximize/minimize effects, and a smoother look all together. The standard look (which was given to my laptop since it does not have much for a video card in it) is still very neat and an improvement on XP, but if your computer lets you run the higher graphics look to Vista, it is amazing. The new effects and transparency features really look neat, plus there is this new feature that you click a button on the Quick Launch Bar and it stacks all the windows out so you can pick from them if you have lots open (very nice for us that like to have lots of things open at once). To check out these features I used a small hack that made Vista think my computer could handle the graphics, and it at least gave me an idea of what it was like (although many effects were not very smooth as my system could not handle them). With the new performance check, there also is a more advanced performance center which lets you see what is really going on in your PC.

Window Switcher and Performance Center:

Now, with the Vista, Microsoft is really trying to be very secure. I find that my XP Pro machine is very secure, but that is because I have some corporate antivirus/spyware solutions on it from work. But for the average user that would not have these, plus might not be as careful with what they are clicking on, Vista is trying to make them safer. For starters, Windows Defender (formerly known as Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta) is included and protecting your PC from day 1. This helps a lot and is a very good program (i use the AntiSpyware Beta myself). They have also added in features to help prevent programs you do not want to execute from executing. This can be on the annoying side though as many times you will be faced with permit/deny windows, even when trying to access Windows Settings.

The Permit/Deny Dialog:

I must say that this is in Beta still and we are still around a year away from seeing the final version. That means that there are still lots of bugs that need to be worked out. Currently it runs very slow, random restarts can occur, the "Bluescreen" is frequent, and many other things. But this is not something to be scared of or blame Microsoft for, this is strictly a Beta version that is meant to show some of Vista, but it will definitely have bugs still being a year away from launch.

On the side of problems though, I do like some new things that Microsoft implemented. We are all used to the Send Error Report dialog that comes up when something goes wrong on our Windows XP machines, but the problem has been that the error report is unreadable except to Microsoft. It will usually just say something like "Critical Error". Now though, the new error report dialog actually tells you what went wrong, and some other details in English! So now we can understand what is going on and what the machine is telling Microsoft if we do decide to send the report!

My biggest worry is that Vista is too much of a hog when it comes to its effects. Yes it looks very nice and is very neat to use, but it also brought my 1.7ghz Laptop to its knees and that was when it was running in the mode without all the Visual Effects on. This leads me to believe that computer manufacturers will really have to up their specs on computers to make them perform like we even see today. With all the overhead in visual appeal, it seems we are loosing too much hard core power on the system. Also, we have not seen a faster CPU than 3.8ghz yet, and the 3.8’s are still very expensive. I am almost wondering if Vista is too much for our current generation of computers. Hopefully though, by the time that Vista comes out in a year, we will see new faster machines that can handle it, plus maybe the final version of Vista will not be so much of a hog (which is quite possible considering the earlier betas of XP were also more of performance hogs than the final release).

Overall I must say that Vista looks very promising. The new features are definitely very neat, plus the new look will grow on you. You can tell that Microsoft has upped the security vastly in this OS and hopefully that should help with keeping users safe. There also are some very neat visual effects if your computer can handle it.You must take into account that this is a Beta that I was looking at, so there are bound to be problems and issues left to be worked out. It still is around a year before we will see Vista on computers being sold at retail, so by then this should be one awesome Operating System!

Chris Leckness (3547 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.