Windows Vista The next big bang

It is big, to say the least, real big. Vista's basic functional advantages over XP include a shiny new user interface, better security, improved data organisation, and near-instantaneous search. It also is a major gaming breakthrough, with DirectX 10, an upgraded and rebuilt collection of APIs that offer six to eight times graphics performance of the current DirectX 9.0.

RIGHTEOUS EYE CANDY
One very noticeable feature of Vista is its beautiful and stylish 3D user interface. Aero is Microsoft's new default 3D desktop theme. Gone are the bright blues and smooth colour gradients of Windows XP. The transparent Aero features subdued colours and unobtrusive rounded corners ready for the Web 2.0 era. Transparencies and soft fade effects give Aero a polished and posh 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 really IS cool.

Icons are larger and full-colour, with alpha-blending effects; but that's just the start. Folder icons show the items within, and even icons of documents are smaller live views of the contents.

Of course, for the no-frills power users, a classic Windows theme will be included that closely resembles desktop elements found in Windows 2000.

MAJOR KERNEL OVERHAUL
Many users view Windows XP (and previous Windows versions) as unsafe. No matter how many patches and updates Microsoft releases, the foundation of the OS itselfthe kernelis designed and built in a way that prevents it from being truly secure. The only solution, it's argued, is to redesign and rebuild the kernel with a focus on security and stability. Well, that's sort of what Microsoft is doing with Vista: making some significant changes to tighten up security and increase stability.

In Vista, it should be much more difficult for unauthorised programs (like Viruses and Trojans) to affect the core of the OS and secretly harm your system. In theory, you practically have to invite one in. Of course, the security of the kernel is unproven and will remain so until the OS ships and is out "in the wild," but it's encouraging that Microsoft has done everything they can to enhance stability and security while maintaining backward compatibility.

It has improved and simplified the way software works with the system and the underlying hardware. A key upgrading of the file system and memory management of Vista is due to a technology called SuperFetch. SuperFetch learns which applications and bits and pieces of the OS you use most and preloads them into memory; so you don't have to wait for a bunch of hard-drive paging before your apps or documents load. Vista also incorporates a pretty sophisticated prioritisation scheme that can even differentiate which applications you are most likely to use at different times (on the weekend vs. during the week, or late at night vs. in the middle of the afternoon). The scheme is even smart enough to make sure that background tasks like virus scanners don't get priority over the foreground tasks you're working on.

SECURITY
Microsoft has worked a great deal on Vista's security. For starters, there's the low-level stuff. The kernel, networking stack, and the way that most other OS features (audio, video, input devices) interact with the kernel have been completely rewritten with security and stability as the primary concern.

Beyond the low-level stuff, there are high-level security changes. Users, by default, operate in a mode with fewer privileges than before, which means inexperienced users who don't know any better can't accidentally install software full of spyware. BitLocker is an application that offers user account level encryption; so if your laptop gets stolen or someone tries to access your computer, they can't get at any of your sensitive material.

The built-in firewall is improved too, with greater control over network access and full support for blocking both incoming and outgoing traffic. Windows Defender is a spyware scanner and blocker application built into the foundation of the OS itself. Internet Explorer 7 runs in a special super-low user access mode that gives the browser very little access to the underlying OS, and most ActiveX controls are off by default.

And just in case things go sour--Vista will also offer a built-in backup utility, which can perform manual backups or restoration of folders or entire drives, or automate backup scheduling and let you backup your files to CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, internal or external hard drives, or even other computers on your local network.

SEARCHING
Windows Vista has a new quick-search bar integrated into the start menu and folder explorer views. The search tool automatically starts returning results as soon as you type in the first letter and narrows down the results as you add more letters. Start typing and the results will appear and dynamically change on the fly. Did you narrow down your results field to zero? No worries--delete a few letters to rebuild the results list instead of running the search all over again. The search returns everything, including programs, files, and folders. Vista even includes the ability to search through data stores, such as e-mail archives, Word documents, and a host of other file types. You'll likely still need to wait for regular, full-system searches when trying to find obscure, seldom-used files not included in the indexing service--you can choose to include them, but we imagine that adding needless files could end up slowing down the quick search.

NETWORKING
For Vista, Microsoft started over from ground zero and rewrote the networking stack from scratch. The new networking stack has a much bigger focus on security, working better with firewalls to allow much finer granularity of which applications can use network resources in which ways, and it's made to stand up a lot better to network attacks. Besides the improved security, Vista's networking will also have greatly improved performance. Wireless also networking is receiving a lot of work, with the goal being to make it easier use wireless networks.

AUDIO
Like a lot other features, audio has been completely reorganised in Vista. Vista will have per-application volume control. That is, you can mute your chatting software when listening to some music or gaming. Also included is a built-in speech recognition engine, and new and improved speech synthesis. Assuming it works as well as it should, you'll be able to dictate emails or give voice commands for web navigations without additional speech recognition software.

DIRECTX 10 AND GAMING
If you play games (and maybe even if you don't), you should care about the next big version of Vista-only DirectX. What's new in DX10? A lot. DX10 will reduce CPU utilization allowing the CPU to focus on other more-important tasks; increase graphics card power and flexibility, and enforce hardware standards that should make life a lot easier on developers. Upon release, there will probably be some Windows XP games that will have enhanced DX10 modes when run under Vista, and maybe even a few "gotta have it" Vista-only games that require DX10. Microsoft has already announced Halo 2, but others should follow.

And if you're thinking about upgrading your video card for Windows Vista, consider waiting a little while for ATI and Nvidia to release their DirectX 10 graphics cards. DirectX 9.0 cards will work great on the desktop and in DX9 games, but you'll need DirectX 10 hardware for the advanced Windows Vista games.

WATCH THAT HOURGLASS
Vista is a power hog. 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 betas. You'll need to have the right hardware to get the Windows Vista experience you see in all the pretty screenshots. 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.

Despite the fact that this article is long, there are loads of things we haven't even touched on. For example, all the new and enhanced applications that'll come bundled with the OS like the Windows Mail and Movie Maker 2.1. Vista is big. Very big.

Vista is still very much a beta product. The real test of the OS will be when it is delivered into the wild, and every virus, worm, and Trojan writer in the world releases their nastiest malware for Microsoft's shiny new OS. After all, the cries that current versions of Windows are "insecure at the core" are in many ways true, and Vista is the OS that goes back to that core and radically alters it.

It's hard to take a real look at Vista, both on the surface and under the hood, and consider it just how good it's going to be. Will there be compatibility problems? Will all the changes high-level and low-levelto improve security and stability be successful? Will the sidebar evolve into useful use screen real estate? Performance isn't bad in the recent betas, but how much will it improve? There are simply too many questions that won't be answered for months yet.

Nevertheless, this is a dramatic, complete upgrade of the Windows platform. Vista is really the next generation of operating system from Microsoft, every bit as significant as the leap from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 or the jump from Mac OS 9 to OS X.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to the wonderful folks at Wikipedia, ExtremeTech, Slashdot, Gamespot, PC Magazine and Cnet for their research on Windows Vista. And Orin for painfully going through this article.