Windows XP have started to show their age, as they have actually been around for more than four years. Microsoft has already released two service packs to patch up to correct some security issues with XP, and the number of added patches is sufficiently large. After years of silence, the new Microsoft operating system named Windows Vista is finally in the final development stage and last September Microsoft presented the first community technical preview of Vista. The technical preview version gave users and idea as to how the new Windows OS was going to be. Of course, since it was just a preview version, it did not lack bugs as well as other problems, mostly related to hardware compatibility, something which is to be expected from new version of pretty much anything, let alone complex operating systems. Recently, Microsoft also presented a second CTP (community technical preview) version of Windows Vista.

The first thing a Windows Vista user will notice is the renewed GUI which has had both aesthetic and practical changes. Windows are now transparent, allowing users to see what's behind them. The taskbar also has an added feature. If you leave your mouse on a minimized application on the taskbar, you can see a preview of that application's window. A particular nice change is the new Alt+Tab feature. Instead of just seeing icons of applications, you can now see previews of the application windows, similar to the ones you can now view from the taskbar. Moreover, Microsoft has implemented a second way to switch between applications, called Flip3D. As you can imagine, windows now have a 3D appearance when switching between tasks!

Multimedia

It is obvious from Microsoft's CTP versions of Vista so far, that the Redmond company considers multimedia capabilities a very important feature of Windows Vista. A whole new version of Media Player will be included. And we mean new! Windows Media Player 11 will be completely re-designed from scratch and will have nothing in common with previous versions. Its use will be even simpler than it used to be, while the Media Library will be able to categorize music. It will allow users to sort lists by artist, album, year, music genre and rating that the user will have to specify. To sum up, the new version of Windows Media Player will more closely resemble a mini-version of the Media Center application rather than any previous versions of Media Players. Another new feature of Vista will be Windows digital Gallery, an effort by Microsoft to add functionality similar to that of Apple's iPhoto, to Windows. What the Digital Gallery offers, is a way to manage and process photos at the same time, without needing a third party application, such as Photoshop. Of course, the image processing capabilities it offers is nothing special or new. The program is accompanied by the familiar Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, which has not been significantly changed, apart from its look-and-feel, to more closely match that of Windows Digital Gallery.

Security

Security on the other hand, is an area in which Microsoft products have generally been characterized as vulnerable. In Windows Vista, Microsoft tries to protect users through new features and applications. The User Account Protection system is particularly interesting and appears in Windows for the first time, although its use is very common in Linux systems. Many of the security problems that rose in previous Windows versions were due to the fact that Windows PC users have full administrative access to their PC right from the start. By using the User Account Protection system, any time a user (or a malicious program?) would need to perform an operation on the system that requires administrative privileges, they will need to supply a password. This way, a guest user or a malicious program will not (hopefully) be able to harm the system. The Security Center application, which was first introduced with Windows XP Service Pack 2, has been enhanced and includes Microsoft Defender (formerly known as Microsoft Anti-Spyware) to protect your PC from malicious code, or malware as it is called. A tool with a similar purpose is Windows Service Hardening, which protects critical system services from being used for the installation of malware. Finally, the Network Access Protection tool will forbid Windows Vista clients from accessing the local network if they don't have the latest updates installed and the latest virus signatures downloaded (virus signatures are used by anti-virus programs to identify viruses). Network Access Protection also offers real-time updates to the user about the health status of the PC.

Data Management

Better and easier data management is one of the primary goals of Windows Vista. The My Documents folder has (finally!) been replaced by what is called the Document Explorer. Moreover, instead of standard document icons, users now see a high-definition thumbnail of each document. Users can re-size the thumbnails up to 256x256 pixels which give a very accurate preview of the contents of the documents. Consequently, you can search and find the information you need without opening any other document than the one containing what you seek! Finally, the notion of Virtual Folders is being introduced. A Virtual Folder holds files that may be physically located in different folders but share some common attributes. For example, you can have a Virtual Folder to hold all .DOC documents regardless of their physical location on the disk. Or you can have a Virtual Folder to hold files created after a certain date and so on.

Versions

According to a recent Microsoft announcement, Windows Vista will be available in two categories and seven different versions. The two categories will be Home and Business. The Home category will include the Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate versions while the Business category will include the Small Business, Professional and Enterprise versions. It seems that all versions will have significant differences with each other. It has been said, for example, that the Home Starter version is aimed at low-end newbie users and will not allow for more than three applications to run concurrently on the system. (Yikes... who's going to buy THAT?)