Well just look at that list of book and magazine whores. One thing I note that never gets mentioned…user interface changes that affect the normal productivity as one needs to get used to and figure out how to use. Just as productivity challenges exist in Office , such is the OS as well. This is only exacerbated by MS getting it wrong and then having to fix soon there after—and I think this is one of the reasons business is slow to change.
All reviewers work for Microsoft. Much coverage of Microsoft is profoundly negative. And the monopolies are all in decline. Thanks for writing this—it persuaded me to re-read the review I did of Vista in the Washington Post back in To sum that piece up:.
It amazes me how apathetic some Windows developers have been about tweaking their apps to work in Vista when so many Mac developers have rewritten their software twice in this decade once for the OS 9-to-OS X transition, once for PowerPC-to-Intel. In looking over my review, I also see that I placed way too much value in the applets bundled with Vista, inasmuch as Microsoft has yanked most of them from 7. The 2 top ads on this page are from Microsoft, Bing and Win Mobile and are probably the only real paying ads.
You work for Microsoft. Actually, why not hazard a guess that Microsoft is paying me off in gold-plated Ferraris, driven to my door by Steve Ballmer himself? Whats going to be funny is how Win7 will be an overwhelming success by comparison to Vista as it will just blow its sales and adoption figures out of the water, which is an effortless non-achievement. I wouldnt do 7 if it werent free and you best believe I will count in the stats for adoption and perhaps even sales you know they will be fudged!
But the most telling fact of my story is I have XP Pro standing by in the wings ready to reformat the machine at the slightest Win7 terminal error. I lived without Vista and if 7 sucks I can live without it too. Quit joking, Harry. Windows Vista is absolute crapola!! A couple of tech guys I trust have told me that win7 is a decent, clean and strong OS and a big improvement over Vista.
However they still are recommending XP over both until win7 SP1. But it may be too late for me. I loved XP. It is fun to look back at the reviews now to see who was able to call it like it is and who's head was stuck in Microsoft's posterior. The two extremes would be Stephen Manes and Paul Thurrott. Paul's review is a real gem that simply defines Windows zealotry.
Not surprisingly the mainstream media all took an approach somewhere in between — how safe…. Good work, Harry. Reviews are often treated too much like news — only good for the moment and then forgotten. I think they should stand alone and, as you have done, be reviewed themselves. I think most consumers wait until something forces or shocks them to change e. Sidekick fiasco rather than switching products when the latest thing comes out.
For example, many reviewers have been constantly changing systems they use — whether it be the cell phone, computer, OS, or whatever is being reviewed — and are used to the upheaval. In fact, it had been so long between OS releases that many users had never been through an upgrade when Vista came along.
This is far more configurable than before, with the ability to specify individual rules that apply to ports, specific applications and inbound and outbound traffic as well. But with packages such as AVG now freely available to download this is an easy hole to fill.
Vista also sees a dramatic upgrade for the backup tool. Though XP did have this facility, it was woefully short on features and very difficult to use. The Windows restore features can also be accessed from here, and owners of the Business, Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows can also make use of a tool known as file shadow copies. This feature, which originally debuted on Windows Server , runs alongside system restore, tracking changes made to files and folders.
When you right-click a file or folder with the feature enabled, you now get the option to restore a previous version without having to restore the entire system. Vista also includes parental controls, which is likely to be a big selling point for those with wee ones.
But the biggest news on the security front, and a development that has sparked plenty of debate, is the introduction of UAC, or user access control, a change intended to help prevent unauthorised changes being made to your system. When a process that could compromise the security of your computer driver or other software installation, for instance begins, Vista generates an alert box asking for permission to proceed and locks down all other Windows tasks so you have to focus on allowing or denying it permission to continue.
This certainly has its advantages for systems administrators and IT professionals. With restricted user accounts, administrators can now run software installs and change settings without having to log out and log in with administrator privileges — a process that proved a real pain in XP.
Account privileges can simply be elevated on a task-by-task basis; you can simply right-click an install application, choose Run as administrator, then enter your administrator username and password to install a new driver or software package.
There are two main problems with it from this perspective. First is the fact that, on most standard home PCs and laptops, the main Windows Vista user is still set up as an Administrator. This means that a careless click of the Continue button in an administrator account, further password entry is not required could allow a dubious item of software to go ahead and wreak its havoc.
Second is the irritation factor. And this is not difficult to do. In conjunction with a TPM trusted platform module chip or USB key, Bitlocker allows you to encrypt not only files and folders, but the whole system volume too. This means that if, for instance, your laptop is stolen, accessing encrypted files and folders on the hard disk will much more difficult than simply booting the computer using an alternative operating system or boot disk.
Vista is no different here, but how much of an upgrade are you going to need? But before you click your heels with glee and run off to place a pre-order for Vista Home Premium, hold on. The key thing to pay attention to here is the memory requirement. Since so much in the Vista upgrade is focused on the visual experience, your display hardware is going to need to be up to spec too.
Fortunately, hardware compatibility would seem to be much less of a potential issue. Inevitably, for users with obscure items of hardware from small manufacturers, compatibility i. Of course this is assuming you plan on installing and running the bit version of Vista.
For those with bit processors planning to upgrade to Vista bit, the situation is more problematic. And anyone who thinks they might need to run legacy bit software should clearly stick with bit Vista. Second, with Vista bit you will not be able to install drivers that are not properly signed. Unfortunately this requirement means bit drivers, which are already thin on the ground, are even less likely to be developed. Not enough to make bit Windows a viable choice for the masses just yet, anyway.
However, BitLocker requires approximately a 1. In normal circumstances, the only time this partition is accessed is when the computer is booting, or when there is a Windows update that changes files in this area which is a legitimate reason to access this section of the drive. The area can be a potential security issue, because a hexadecimal editor such as dskprobe. However, as with other full disk encryption technologies, BitLocker is vulnerable to a cold boot attack, especially where TPM is used as a key protector without a boot PIN being required too.
A variety of other privilege-restriction techniques are also built into Vista. An example is the concept of "integrity levels" in user processes, whereby a process with a lower integrity level cannot interact with processes of a higher integrity level and cannot perform DLL—injection to a processes of a higher integrity level.
The security restrictions of Windows services are more fine-grained, so that services especially those listening on the network have no ability to interact with parts of the operating system they do not need to. Obfuscation techniques such as address space layout randomization are used to increase the amount of effort required of malware before successful infiltration of a system.
Code Integrity verifies that system binaries have not been tampered with by malicious code. As part of the redesign of the network stack, Windows Firewall has been upgraded, with new support for filtering both incoming and outgoing traffic.
Advanced packet filter rules can be created which can grant or deny communications to specific services. The bit versions of Vista require that all device drivers be digitally signed, so that the creator of the driver can be identified. While much of the focus of Vista's new capabilities has highlighted the new user-interface, security technologies, and improvements to the core operating system, Microsoft also adding new deployment and maintenance features:.
Windows Vista includes a large number of new application programming interfaces. Chief among them is the inclusion of version 3. Version 3. These technologies are also available for Windows XP and Windows Server to facilitate their introduction to and usage by developers and end users. There are also significant new development APIs in the core of the operating system, notably the completely re-architected audio, networking, print, and video interfaces, major changes to the security infrastructure, improvements to the deployment and installation of applications "ClickOnce" and Windows Installer 4.
There are some issues for software developers using some of the graphics APIs in Vista. Games or programs which are built solely on the Windows Vista-exclusive version of DirectX , version 10, cannot work on prior versions of Windows, as DirectX 10 is not available for previous Windows versions.
Also, games which require the features of D3D9Ex, the updated implementation of DirectX 9 in Windows Vista are also incompatible with previous Windows versions. However, hardware overlay is not supported, because it is considered as an obsolete feature in Vista. The "Hardware profiles" startup feature has also been removed, along with support for older motherboard technologies like the EISA bus, APM and Game port support though on the bit version game port support can be enabled by applying an older driver.
Windows Vista does not include the " Luna " visual theme, created in for Windows XP, or most of the classic color schemes which have been part of Windows since the Windows 3. Also the caption buttons are changed. Only Windows Classic can still be found in that operating system. Windows Vista ships in six different editions. These are roughly divided into two target markets, consumer and business, with editions varying to cater for specific sub-markets.
For consumers, there are four editions, with three available for economically more developed countries. Windows Vista Home Basic is intended for budget users and is available only in emerging markets. Windows Vista Home Premium covers the majority of the consumer market, and contains applications for creating and using multimedia. The home editions cannot join a Windows Server domain. For businesses, there are three editions. Windows Vista Business is specifically designed for small and medium enterprises small and medium-sized businesses, is only available to customers participating in Microsoft's Microsoft Software Assurance Software Assurance program.
Windows Vista Ultimate contains the complete feature-set of both the Home and Business combination of both Home Premium and Enterprise editions, as well as a set of Windows Ultimate Extras , and is aimed at enthusiasts. All editions except Windows Vista Starter support both bit x86 and bit x64 processor architectures. Similar sanctions exist in South Korea. A Vista Capable or equivalent PC is capable of running all editions of Windows Vista although some of the special features and high-end graphics options may require additional or more advanced hardware.
Windows Vista's Basic and Classic interfaces work with virtually any graphics hardware that supports Windows XP or ; accordingly, most discussion around Vista's graphics requirements centers on those for the Windows Aero interface. Microsoft offers a tool called the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to assist Windows XP and Vista users in determining what versions of Windows their machine is capable of running. Although the installation media included in retail packages is a bit DVD, customers needing a CD-ROM or customers who wish for a bit install media are able to acquire this media through the Windows Vista Alternate Media program.
The Ultimate edition includes both bit and bit media. The digitally downloaded version of Ultimate includes only one version, either bit or bit, from Windows Marketplace.
Maximum limits on physical memory RAM that Windows Vista can address vary depending on the both the Windows version and between bit and bit versions.
The following table specifies the maximum physical memory limits supported:. The total maximum number of logical processors of a PC that Windows Vista supports is: 32 for bit; 64 for bit. Microsoft occasionally releases service packs for its Windows operating systems to fix bugs and add new features.
The initial deployment of the service pack caused a number of machines to continually reboot, rendering the machines unusable. This caused Microsoft to temporarily suspend automatic deployment of the service pack until the problem was resolved.
The synchronized release date of the two operating systems reflected the merging of the workstation and server kernels back into a single code base for the first time since Windows Initially, the service pack only supported 5 languages — English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese.
Support for the remaining 31 languages was released on April 14, A whitepaper published by Microsoft near the end of August outlined the scope and intent of the service pack, identifying three major areas of improvement: reliability and performance, administration experience, and support for newer hardware and standards.
For example, if you suspect that everything's running a little slow, you might find that your hard drive is returning the lowest score. Windows Vista will then recommend a faster hard drive or a drive with larger compatibility. Mostly, though, the video card will be the sore spot for most users. There's also an event log viewer to show, for example, after a specific software install your system performance started to degrade, and that uninstalling the software may restore your overall performance.
Under the hood, Microsoft has moved device drivers for DVD burners and printers out of the system kernel; Microsoft says that a majority of system crashes can be traced to improperly installed third-party device drivers. Indeed, after testing several early builds, we found Windows Vista to be remarkably stable and robust.
Support Along with the performance monitors, Microsoft has improved the Help section considerably. Of these, we really like a feature available on some, not all, FAQs that allows you to automate the solution by executing a script.
This method doesn't teach you how to do it in the future, but it will accomplish the task at hand. For example, if you choose to update a device driver, Windows Vista will darken the desktop; highlight and open the Start menu, the Control Panel, and the Device Manager; then pause to ask you what device you want to update.
It's like having a technician at your desktop, walking you though the process. There's an increasing reliance on user-generated support forums, which leads us to believe that Microsoft is shying away from its own live technical support.
At press time, Microsoft's final support policy was unavailable. Conclusion Perhaps we're spoiled, but after more than five years of development, there's a definite "Is that all? Like cramming an info-dump into a book report the night before it's due, there certainly are a lot of individual features within the operating system, but the real value lies in their execution--how the user experiences or doesn't experience these--and like the info-dump, we came away shaking our heads, disappointed.
Compared with Mac OS X Despite the addition of a system-wide, built-in Search, and various efforts to break away from staidly old directory trees, you still need to drill down one level to even access Search.
And there are far too many dependencies on Microsoft products; this is not a very objective operating system, as preference is always given to Microsoft products of which there are many , from MSN Search to RSS feeds only from Internet Explorer. But is Windows Vista a bad operating system? It's just a disappointment for PC users who hoped that Microsoft would deliver something truly exciting to finally leapfrog ahead of Apple.
They failed. But stick around; this is just Windows Vista 1. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 is due out sometime before the end of the year. Windows Vista SP1 promises to fix what's known to be wrong within Windows Vista and should offer a few concrete reasons to switch. Robert Vamosi. Windows Vista Ultimate edition. Windows Vista Ultimate does not put Search on the desktop it's buried within applications, within the Start Menu ; optimized only for the Microsoft Windows ecosystem for example, RSS feeds from Internet Explorer 7 get preferential treatment ; there's simply too much and not all of it is implemented properly; no new software yet written exclusively for Windows Vista; and there are too many editions of Windows Vista.
Windows Vista is essentially warmed-over Windows XP. On the other hand, if you need a new computer right now, Windows Vista is stable enough for everyday use. Compare editions.
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