Paul Blair
Unless you have been out of this world for a time, you would be well aware that Microsoft intends to release a new version of Windows soon. The generic “model’ is termed Vista, and it will replace the current XP model as the front-line product.
XP has been king of the road for a while now – in reality, from early 2000. XP is a tarted-up version of Windows 2000 – the main difference being that Microsoft went to incredible lengths to include in XP as many drivers for all sorts of hardware that it could find. A different user interface (known as Luna, which drew a few laughs at the time), and 2000 became XP.
Vista comes at a time when Microsoft is possibly losing some interest in the home user. After all, many users have (or had) access to Windows through their place of business, their children with academic pricing, or it came bundled with a new computer. In fact, over-the-counter sales of XP in a box were probably not very great. And there are bigger and more profitable fish to fry – look at the work that has gone into Exchange 12!
Microsoft moved product during the XP years, but a short look at their Activation scheme will give some idea of the level of protection they wanted to achieve for their income stream. But many things have moved along – broadband is quite common now, and other devices are making an impact. And some other companies have taken advantage of the long lull in Microsoft product releases to dip their software toe(s) into the water, giving Microsoft such concern that they have mimicked some of the better features.
I thought I would take a look at the long-awaited Beta 2 release of Vista. It emerged from the bunker in late May, and MSDN and TechNet people got first look.
It seems that there will be a number of versions of Vista – from the cheapest, least featured, to the muscle-bound wallet version. It seems that all versions will be on DVD, maybe more than one (note that – if you don't have a DVD drive, you're not ready for Vista) and your product key will enable the version you have paid for. The Beta is 3.1GB (on disk, it used 7.3GB, there are 37,000 files) and will probably grow quite some more – who can recall how many floppies you used to install Windows 3.1?
And Vista will self-regulate itself. There is an interesting performance rating built in, and if your box doesn't have enough grunt, features will be reduced or disabled. My box (3GHz+2GB RAM) rated a 3, although just what that means is not explained.
Remembering that this is a Beta, I shouldn't comment on its dismal install time of just on an hour onto a pre-formatted hard drive. But it took that long, and performance from then on was certainly not flash. I kept reminding myself that I had loaded in Ultimate, the top-of-the-line/biggest version.
The Start button label has gone (I always find it ironic to click on Start to get to Stop, but then some logistician will tell me you have to start to be able to stop ... oh, never mind). In its place is an orb (for want of a better description) with the non-waving 4 colour flag, with a ToolTip that tells you this is Start. I have some sympathy for the help desk folk here…how will they tell users to go to the orb…?
There is a new Start menu. At first I found it confusing (I was tempted to revert to the XP style allowed) but then I realized that an awful lot was jammed in there. Gone is simplicity…the emphasis is on function, not the name of the software. I guess we will get used to it. The only confusion I see is where people use multiple apps – e.g., 2 drawing packages to take advantage of different in-built utilities.
Lots of things are still there, sometimes with a new name (e.g., Outlook Express is now Microsoft Mail) or not (e.g. Control Panel), and all you can do is work through them. I don't believe Microsoft employed any ergonomists, but hey!
The “localise’ function still doesn't work. About the first question you get asked at startup is “where are you?’. You tell it “Australia’, and it promptly forgets this. Come to time zones, and you could be in Antarctica or Zanzibar…it doesn't know. Later on, when I got to the Beta for Office 2007, it was the same deal. Doh!
And new things are there to intrigue you. Glass (Aero Glass to the purist) is where the outer border of any window is translucent – you can get a blurry idea of what is “behind’ the current window, although why you would want to do that is quite beyond me. This seems to have been nicked from the game designers, and requires some heavy lifting in the graphics department. This is a major selling point that no-one will take the slightest notice of (which it deserves) because it is just eye candy. And worse – to do this, they have turned off the distinction between the window with focus and the one(s) without – the active window was always clearly visible since I forget when.
If you look at the picture, the only difference is the red X close button. Don't bother with glass, it's like the highest number on your car speedo. You won't remember it. But if you're a gamer, you will love it.
That's enough about appearance and the user interface.
To try things out, I used the old test principle – do the things you do every day, and see how they compare.
Vista failed the first test, just as did XP, 2000, Me, 98SE…you still can't print a file list from Windows Explorer (I forget its new name).
So I slung on Office 2003… As a user of Access, I decided to fire up a database. Oooppps. No can do. The Jet Engine 4 update was called for, but when I downloaded it, it refused to install. So Access 2003 is untested. That's when I decided to go the whole hog and get the Beta for Office 2007.
I have a copy of Money 2005 – and it also refused to install. Hmmm – was I doing something wrong here? Then my virus protection decided it wasn't up to speed. Is this just Beta, or should I start to suspect commercial motives?
But then I kept it simple. I tried all the homely things, wrote a letter, tried a spreadsheet, logged onto some active PHP work…it all worked. Now, I´m not sure if the “experience’ was better, but nothing broke. Until the hard drive started to clatter…seems that Vista is very heavy on disk use, but my 3-month old drive was up to it.
My view of Vista is probably quite restricted – my computer tends to do workplace things, and apart from a digital camera, gizmos and gadgets are not in my plan at the moment. So my approach is probably vanilla, but I do work things hard.
One of the new Gadgets – a new set of Tweak tools - is a speedometer-style CPU meter. I opened it up, and went on working. The needle rarely dropped below 40% (this is a hyper-threaded processor). So the CPU works quite hard.
Microsoft have taken security to heart – in fact, when I set up the computer, I found my work paths were constantly blocked by a window that called itself User Account Control. This is a protective mechanism that seems to assume that all new users know nothing, so have matching privileges. That can be altered, but then I discovered that, as the installer, I too was blocked! It took me a wee while to figure out a way around all the blockages (in fact, you can unbutton a lot of the security stuff with "one click of a button", after you've clicked 20 other buttons to get to that point). I guess this was simply a way of trying to resist unauthorised access, either from the keyboard or over the web, but I still see passwords on Post-it notes in some offices…
And for those of you who yearn for a return to DOS (or have software that only comes in that flavour) – there is a DOS window available. The only trouble is, its maximum screen window size is only about 15% of the available screen real estate.
There are a thousand things that I could write about…but the main point to be aware of here is just how much power will be available to you. You might not like the screen font, be annoyed by the pop-ups and Microsoft-centric design, but Windows (and its resulting applications) now present you with almost unlimited potential. There is enough power to author a book or 3, the database systems are about equal to a lot of DBMS from only a year or so ago, and the graphical workspaces are replete and complete. Whether you need all that is up to you, but you will be surrounded by opportunity.