The new OS is designed to offer a shiny new user interface, better security, improved data organisation and near-instantaneous search. silicon.com sister site GameSpot took a closer look at what Windows Vista has to offer.
Look and feel
Windows Desktop Manager
The next version of Windows brings an end to 20 years of 2D desktop rendering. Windows Aero is actually just a theme, or skin type, used by the Desktop Windows Manager, a new graphical system built into Windows Presentation Foundation. While Windows Vista is Microsoft's DirectX 10 vehicle, the 3D Desktop Windows Manager requires only DirectX 9.0. The switch to 3D rendering means that Windows will now have a use for that fancy $400 graphics card on the desktop.
Instead of displaying plain old windows, the new 3D user interface elements will be able to scale, rotate, and be manipulated with ease. The new desktop paves the way for new navigation features, such as Flip3D and an improved Alt-Tab application-switching interface. Flip3D lets you navigate through all your application windows by pulling your open windows together and arranging them into a 3D Rolodex format that you can cycle through and select by using your mouse or arrow keys.
The new Alt-Tab interface presents thumbnail shots of the contents of each window, as opposed to the Alt-Tab interface found in Windows XP, which provides only an icon of the program. As is the nature of beta software, nothing is set in stone; the look and functionality might change considerably.
Windows Aero
Aero is Microsoft's new default 3D desktop theme. Gone are the bright blues and smooth colour gradients of Windows XP. The new transparent Aero theme features subdued colours and unobtrusive, rounded corners ready for the web 2.0 era. Transparencies and soft fade effects give Aero a polished look. The borders of each window blur objects lying under them, leaving the window you are working on in focus while giving you a hint of what lies beneath. It's all very pretty.
Mouse over a navigation button and the button will glow and spill light onto neighbouring windows or onto the background. New windows slowly materialise into existence and, when minimised, they fade and shrink downward.
To accommodate for no-frills power users, Microsoft will include a classic Windows theme that closely resembles desktop elements found in Windows 2000. However, in our hands-on testing with Beta 1 we noticed that the austere theme doesn't feel as snappy as the Aero interface, which is strange considering that the Aero theme has a lot more visual complexity. We'll chalk that up to the beta status of the product - performance tweaks will likely wait until the end.
3D performance
Graphics card requirements
Windows Vista doesn't have official minimum system requirements yet but Microsoft has recommended at least 512MB of memory, a "modern" Intel or AMD processor and a DirectX 9.0 graphics card for the current Windows Vista Beta 1. You'll need to have the right hardware to get the full Windows Vista experience. Yes, your system can run Vista if you don't have a DirectX 9.0 card but you won't be able to enjoy the full Aero desktop effect because the system will default back to 2D mode.
You can't have just any DX9-compatible card either. According to Andrew Dodd, product manager for ATI's software group, the quality of the graphics card can impact the performance of the Aero desktop because it's now just like any other 3D application. Using a new Windows Vista driver from ATI, we tested a handful of ATI DX9 video cards on Windows Vista to see if we could get the system to lag on the desktop. Our 256MB Radeon X1900 XTX and Radeon X850PE cards performed flawlessly when we dragged a window over 10 open Internet Explorer windows. Our 128MB Radeon X300 SE showed some slight hitching when we got up over seven windows but we had to frantically whip around the mouse to make it noticeable -- we wouldn't have seen any signs of strain with normal usage. Current discrete DirectX 9.0 video cards should be able to handle Aero without a problem.
Navigation and organisation
Search
Using Windows file search has long been the operating system equivalent to searching for your car keys in the morning - you have a hazy idea of where they should be but it'll take longer than you think it should to find them. As anyone who has ever used Windows search will tell you, if you forget the exact name or location of the file or folder you want, count on wasting an intolerable amount of time waiting for Windows to return your search results and then even more time wading through the barely organised result list.
Being able to find your data quickly is almost as important as having the data itself, and Windows' failings in file navigation have left the door wide open for competitors willing to provide a service the OS can't provide. Last year, search giant Google released a desktop search program that offered lightning-quick desktop search results for finding e-mails, files and even websites stored in your web history.
Microsoft improved its file search system in Windows XP by using indexing to speed up searches but Windows Vista has evolved file navigation and organisation to an entirely new level. Finding your documents, programs and media files is much easier in Windows Vista. Yes, it's difficult to get excited about a new navigation system but the change is significant since it impacts how we work and play on the desktop every single day.
3%
2%
