Techies have been beta testing Microsoft's next client operating system, Windows Vista, for many months, but now that a public Beta 2 (the Customer Preview Edition) is available, interest in Vista is picking up more steam.
Some folks, however, would rather not rush in where angels fear to tread. Your system might not meet the minimum requirements. Or maybe you don't have virtual machine software and don't want to risk installing a dual-boot configuration on your main machine. Or perhaps you just want to know what's new in this next generation OS to help you decide where it's worth giving it a try. In this article, we'll show you some of the most interesting new features.
Interface makeover
The first and most obvious change is the look. Unlike the
somewhat cartoonish style of the default XP interface
(which I and most other tech people I know immediately changed back to the
Classic theme), Vista has an elegant and
sophisticated look that's reminiscent of (sorry, Microsoft, but it's true)
Macintosh OS X. For those of us who love the Mac's good looks but prefer
Windows' functionality, this is great news.
If your video card supports the Aero Glass interface, you get translucent title bars, cool animations and lots of eye candy, as shown in Figure A.
Figure A |
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| The new Aero Glass interface |
Note
When accessing the Vista desktop via Remote Desktop from a
computer that doesn't have a high powered video card, you won't see the pretty
transparent effect on your application windows even though the Vista computer itself displays them. At least, this was
my experience with Beta 2.
Sidebar
The collection of items on the right side of the screen is
the sidebar, which contains a set of gadgets of your choosing. Some choices
include:
- Calculator that performs basic math functions.
- Analog clock (several designs to choose from).
- CPU and memory meters that let you keep an eye on the amount of system resources in use.
- Currency converter for quick international monetary calculations.
- Feed viewer for tracking news, sports, and entertainment headlines via RSS.
- Feed watcher for monitoring your selected RSS feeds.
- Notepad for quickly jotting reminders or bits of info you need to keep.
- Slide show applet that displays a continuous slide show of the photos in your Pictures folder.
- Stocks ticker that lets you track trading prices and see charts for your selected stocks.
- Countdown timer for alerting you when a specified interval has passed.
- Number and picture puzzles.
- Recycle bin.
- Games.
In addition to the gadgets available from within Vista, you can get more sidebar gadgets online at http://gallery.microsoft.com/.
Taskbar
At first glance, the taskbar looks similar to XP's, albeit
with a classy black metallic finish and round start button. The quick launch
bar, open apps section, and system tray are all in the usual places. But you
get a surprise when you hover over an open application icon: A preview of that
window pops up, as shown in Figure B. And if there are multiple instances of that application, you'll
see a whole stack of preview pages.
Figure B |
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| Hovering over an open window icon on the taskbar pops up a preview of the window. |
Start menu
The Start menu hasn't changed much. You can still pin your
favourites to the top-left side, and the right side still contains commonly used
items such as Documents, Pictures and Music, Computer, Network and Control
Panel, Search, and Help. If you want to restart, switch users, or put the
system to sleep, you'll need to click the small arrow by the Shut Down and Lock
buttons, as shown in Figure C.
Vista is the biggest rip off of OSX. It has features that have been in linux and OSX for ages. Instead of ripping of ideas off other companies and infecting your pc with viruses how about some real innovation for Microsoft.