If Tomorrow Comes: Vis(t)a to the Modern World

Vista. Wondering what it is? It's the name (Originally codenamed Longhorn) of the next release of Windows Operating System, expected to be released somewhere around summer of 2006. And NO, there is no typo here. It is indeed 2006. The next logical question that might pop up in your brains is why I am talking about something that is going to be released in 2006 in 2005. There is a good reason for me to do that. The Beta 1 version of the operating system just got released & is creating some buzz around the Computer World. Any new release from Microsoft creates a buzz (Of course, a whole lot more controversies as well) & the release of a new operating system is no exception. This article will briefly talk about the features & enhancements that are expected in this new release.

According to Microsoft, the design goals for the latest operating system fall into broadly three categories:

(1) Improvements in security, privacy, performance, reliability & ease of deployment. (Please take good note of the ‘Keywords’ security & reliability. This will be something we all will be re-visiting a whole lot of times once the operating system is released. According to one recent report, an Austrian programmer has already come up with a virus for Vista!!!!!!! And as usual, Microsoft has denied it. Sigh)

(2) Bringing clarity to the organization & use of information. (Did Microsoft lack clarity till now on what they wanted to do???? Maybe when organizations grow bigger, lack of clarity is probably one of their ‘Strong’ points)

(3) Seamless integration of people & devices ( I am sure that this is something that Microsoft was forced to take up as their design goals. If they did not take this up, their competitors would have easily swamped the market with various devices & software that does this)

Now let’s take a look at some of the features that have been introduced. The Beta version does not have many of the user-oriented features with which it will finally ship & hence this Beta version could be considered as a sneak preview of what one can expect when the final version arrives.

(1) Graphics: The graphics looks great & it should be a wonderful experience to work on the final version of the operating system. Doesn’t this look great? (Is there someone else who gets a feeling that we are looking at a desktop from one of the Linux clones? Or is it just me? Maybe this is what they mean by ‘Convergence of Technologies’. Linux wants to ape the GUI’s of Microsoft & Microsoft wants to ‘Reproduce’ the feel of a Linux desktop. I give up. Technology is not my ‘Cup of Tea’ after all)

(2) Search capability: Each & every window seems to be associated with a search field & even the ‘Start Menu’ has a search window at the bottom. This search lets the user type in the starting letters of an application & the results display the list of matching executables. It looks cool, isn’t it? (Did you folks try out the Google Sidebar? It would beat out any search capability anyone introduces. Oops……. Did I blurt that out? )

(3) User Account Protection: There is the creation of a new type of user account called as the “Limited Account”. This has more privileges than the normal Windows XP guest account but fewer privileges than the administrative account. What this means is that users logged in as “Limited Account” will be able to perform all the regular functions but cannot install new programs. This feature will be highly useful in preventing spyware being installed in the PC’s (Network administrators, are you paying attention?)

(4) Other features: Some of the other features that are expected to debut in Vista are Internet Explorer 7 with tabbed browsing capability (as in Firefox, so to say) & a new display engine, support for 64-bit computing, a new restart manager (This, they promise will reduce reboots by 50%!!!!!!!!!), new tools for diagnosing & dealing with crashes, hardware failures & networking issues