Microsoft Windows Vista - An Operating System with Eye Candy and (Some) Brains

Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system, is at once slick and cumbersome. It's superior to Windows XP and Mac OS X at many small things, but ends up being hopelessly feeble when it comes to some big-ticket items. For example, basic file operations (copying, moving, deleting files and folders) are needlessly slow and occasionally laughably glacial. It's not unusual to see a progress bar last a full minute when doing something as simple as deleting a small file from your desktop.
 
Security in Vista is better than previous versions, but not as well thought out as it should have been. The UAC (User Account Control) prompt, the most obvious security feature in Vista, is annoying, obtrusive, poorly conceived, and easily defeated. If you can believe it, accessing shared files over a network is even slower in Vista than in previous Microsoft operating systems. Sure, there's more security at work in Vista, but mostly, needless overhead and pointless extra features are responsible for bogging down network sharing.
 
Lots of little touches, however, make Vista more usable on a day-to-day basis than any other OS. For instance, when you copy or move files from one folder to another, the various confirmations shown are friendlier, easier to understand, and more flexible. (See the User Interface section below for details.)
 
Vista has been designed from the ground up to support wireless (WiFi) networking, whereas WiFi was merely an afterthought in Windows XP (added only in Service Pack 2). And Vista's WiFi support is head and shoulders above that found in Mac OS X.
 
Finally, the Aero Glass interface is pretty, and certainly a massive improvement over the cringe-worthy UI in Windows XP. It's probably the most obvious change from earlier versions, and a welcome one at that.

What's Hot: Since Vista comes with most new PCs, it's a great deal if you're already laying out the cash for a new machine. There's no reason to consider an earlier version of Windows just to save a few bucks.

If you're upgrading from an earlier version, or buying a fresh install for a home-built PC (or an Intel-based Mac), the best bang for your buck will be the Home Premium edition. The Ultimate edition doesn't offer that much over any of the lesser editions, and is hardly worth the premium price. Conversely, the Home Basic edition lacks the Aero Glass interface, the Media Center application, the DVD and backup software, tablet support, and live thumbnails for task switching.What's Not: Truth be told, if Microsoft had any significant competition, Vista would be far less expensive than it is. (Sure, both Mac OS X and Linux are alternative operating systems, but neither product directly competes with Windows nor fills the same niche.) For what you get, Vista is absurdly overpriced.

The street prices range from $185 to $360 for the Home Basic and Ultimate editions, respectively, but only those lucky souls building a new PC from scratch will pay those prices. If you're upgrading from Windows XP or Windows 2000, you'll pay between $100 and $240 for the same software.

Considering you can get a brand new PC with Vista preinstalled for under $350, it's hard to justify buying this product at its full price.

What's Hot: If you've ever had the misfortune of installing a PC operating system, Vista setup is a breeze by comparison. The unnecessary prompts and questions are kept to a minimum; you can even install the product without typing in the 25-digit license key (you have to enter it eventually, or Vista will stop working after a few weeks).What's Not: Setup takes a long time, and includes lots of unnecessary files (such as desktop backgrounds, sample pictures, videos, and other files) that needlessly consume disk space. Installing on a system with multiple hard drives or hard drive partitions can be a bit of a headache until you figure things out. For instance, you can choose which partition to use, but it will always be assigned as drive C:, even if it's not the first drive. To maintain your drive letters, install from within a previous installation of Windows.

What's Hot: The new Aero Glass interface (available in every edition except Home Basic) is nice to look at, and the fact that it lets you more or less see what's behind a window makes it easier to locate the window you want. Microsoft is systematically removing drop-down menus from many of its applications, most notably Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and all of Office 2007. In the case of the two Explorers, this is a welcome change, and makes their interfaces cleaner and more streamlined. (Other tools, like Notepad and Windows Movie Maker, still have their menus, so this "menuless movement" is, at the very least, in its infancy.)

One of the best features of Windows Vista is something too small to ever earn its own bullet-point on the retail packaging. When you copy or move a file to a folder that contains another file of the same name, Vista shows a "Do you want to replace this file?" dialog box, as you'd expect. But in it you get a generous helping of choices, including the option to rename the file you're copying to preserve the existing copy. The dialog box also includes comparisons of the sizes and dates of the files, and even thumbnails for images, so you can make your decision without having to open the files separately. It's a small interface tweak, but a welcome one nonetheless.

Finally, File Open/Save dialog boxes, which have always been a weak point in Microsoft products, are at long last useful. They're essentially mini versions of Windows Explorer windows, complete with the Vista-style address bar so you can see where you are at a glance.What's Not: The 3D-flip interface (Windows logo key+Tab) is pure glitz, and a clumsy way to switch between open windows. Something like the Exposé feature in Mac OS X would've been much more useful. Microsoft made some effort to transform the cluttered Control Panel into easier-to-navigate, web-style pages. But they didn't finish the job, and as a result, about a third of the Control Panel is still presented in antiquated tabbed property windows. Overall, the Control Panel interface is hopelessly inconsistent.

Finally, Vista's Windows Explorer suffers from an annoying problem that has plagued Windows Explorer since its debut in Windows 95, namely its inability to remember its own settings. Say you want to sort all your files by date, and you want the Attributes column to appear whenever you view your folders in Details mode. In Windows Vista, there's absolutely no reliable way to set your preferences and make them stick. Sure, there's a system in place for applying your defaults, but it just doesn't work that well. It's astounding how such a big and powerful company still can't get such a simple feature right after all these years.

What's Hot: Windows Vista is the first release of Windows with an edition that includes both the Media Center and Tablet PC features. This means that you can build a DVR (Digital Video Recorder, like a TiVo) with Vista, and control it entirely with a pen and tablet (no keyboard).What's Not: The media applications included with Vista, such as Media Player, MS Paint, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows DVD Maker, are just awful when compared to similar products included with Mac OS X, such as iTunes, iPhoto, and iDVD. Sure, you can get third-party software that handles photos, video, and sound with aplomb, but for the price Microsoft charges for Vista, these tools could (and should) be much better and easier to use.

What's Hot: As Windows evolves (Vista is just one in a long line of Windows-based operating system products), each successive version is better capable of handling faster processors, larger amounts of memory, and wider varieties of tasks. Vista works better with modern hardware (such as WiFi equipment, USB devices, and video adapters) than any previous version, and for that reason alone, it's a worthy upgrade. Of course, this is less of an issue if your PC is more than two or three years old.What's Not: All other things being equal (for example, on the same hardware), Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP in just about all ways. But since it does more with newer hardware (that is, the Aero Glass interface), the end result is a bit of a wash, provided you have a new PC.

What's Hot: In Windows Vista, most of what you do is handled by a "standard user account." If you need to make a change to your PC's configuration or modify operating system files, you'll encounter the UAC prompt, a window that alerts you that the action requires administrator access. This means it's harder to mess up your PC with spyware or reckless Registry changes. Of course, the UAC is so annoying, you'll likely want to turn it off, so your copy of Vista may end up no more secure than Windows XP.What's Not: The default permissions for file sharing allow anyone in the world to read your personal files, yet would allow nobody (even trusted users) to modify them. Yet Microsoft "recommends" using the default security settings. Although Internet Explorer 7 is now somewhat smarter about downloading dangerous content to your PC (or rather, about notifying you before it does so), it's still a huge, gaping security hole. Anyone serious about security should opt for the free Mozilla Firefox browser, which works swimmingly with Windows Vista.

Windows Vista is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's the slickest version of Windows yet, with lots of pretty things to look at, adequate support for the latest hardware, and several nice touches. On the other hand, it's the poster child for committee thinking: it's bloated and slow, overwrought with features that don't work that well, and built upon a patchwork foundation.If you're a Mac junkie considering Windows, you'll probably hate Vista, but you'll like it more than any earlier version. If you're a Windows junkie, you'll probably like Vista better than Mac OS X.

But if you're like most of us, who use Windows because you have to, then a move to Vista is undoubtedly a no-brainer. The only choice, then, is between the Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate editions, and whether to get it separately or preinstalled on a new PC. In this case, I suggest Home Premium if you have a PC made in 2006 or later, or a new PC if your old machine is vintage 2005 or earlier. Get the Ultimate edition if you must have the cutting edge, but don't spend more than $50 extra for the privilege.