Sickles Insight

Unless you reside as a plane crash victim on the island represented in LOST or you have been living beneath a rock, you have no doubt heard about the soon to be released operating system: Windows Vista.

Windows Vista has long resided under its codename ‘Longhorn’, just this year releasing beta versions and announcing release dates. Several days ago, November 8, Vista was released to the manufacturing stage. Microsoft had originally promised the product release to all in time for the holidays, but according to Jim Allchin, co-president – the release for consumers is now pushed back to late January 2007.

Microsoft will be releasing to businesses and volume licensing locations as quickly as the end of November.

I do not believe that anyone with even a mildly technical background will be applying a Vista upgrade in these early stages. For most individuals, in many ways, it does not even make reasonable sense to purchase Windows Vista unless you will be upgrading your entire computer. I personally will not be moving to Windows Vista until several months after its release (maybe even until service pack 1 is pushed out – and you know it will be). There has been much hype in some of the new features, we will get to those in a minute. First I would like to share a few reasons you might consider sticking to Windows XP for the time being.

Firstly and important to many, the new Operating System, Vista, will cost $100 or more to make the switch from XP. Unless you’re buying a new PC and starting from scratch, you may be better off saving the money for something else and waiting until you upgrade your computer. Chances are the price will drop, or you will find a rebate or free license with the purchase of a new computer.

Vista is a power freaking hog! Unless you have a top-end PC, you’ll be missing out on many features and improvements. Without the high-end graphics hardware, you most likely won’t even be able to use the new Aero Glass interface. At least Microsoft was smart in offering both the Aero Basic and Windows Classic looks, which will let older and slower PCs run Vista without too much shame. It just won’t look as pretty as it could be.

Microsoft has already ditched some aggressive ideas (such as the whole “virtual folders” thing) because the concepts proved too confusing for typical users. Even so, you’ll find that the new Windows OS changes a lot of old tricks, and not always for the better. Five dollars to the person who can find the “Run” command first! Many users may struggle acclimating themselves to the new interface.

Windows in itself is not a bad operating system, but upgrading a past system is not in my eyes a worthwhile investment. If you are still up in the air on Windows Vista, a lot of information can be found both for and against the operating system by completing a simple search on the internet.

For comparison sakes, and only to be fair - Here are some of the most common claims for why you would want to switch to Vista.

Security: The security portion of Windows Vista has many more options even including full disk encryption. This is a fair offer and can become very useful for home users. There are too many changes to mention, but one additional mentionable change is the ability to easily and quickly invoke admin privileges to run particular tasks. The concept here is that you run as a limited user for normal tasks, email, internet browsing etc. If you wish to make a change that could be harmful to your PC, you will have to invoke the admin capability. This is a security feature because it means a virus can not as quickly or as easily take control of your PC when running as you the user – because you do not have administrative rights.

Internet Explorer 7: All I have to say is I’ve never liked Internet Explorer, and the new version does not change my opinion. I would recommend that you take the time to look into firefox for your web browsing needs. I’ve been using firefox for over four years now, and with the recent release of firefox2.0, I think everyone should make the switch.

Looks Good: Microsoft has no doubt spent a chunk of time building high-end graphics effects into Windows. The Aero Glass interface features visually engaging 3D rendering, animation, and transparencies. Translucent icons, program windows, and other elements not only look cool, but they add depth and context to the interface. Of course, don’t forget that you’ll need to invest in powerful graphics hardware and a fairly up to date system to manage all these effects, otherwise you’ll probably be looking at Windows Classic.

Desktop search Ability: The new OS tightly integrates instant desktop search, (like google already has) doing away with the excessively slow and inadequate search functions in XP today. Powerful indexing and user-assignable metadata makes searching for all kinds of data much easier. And if you’re running Vista on a Windows Longhorn network, you can perform searches across the network to other PCs.

Better updates: Not really sure what the hype is on this. Vista is going to do away with using Internet Explorer to access the Windows Update feature, instead utilizing a new application to handle the chore of keeping your system patched and up to date. I guess it’s suppose to be easier - big whoop! What if we could have a system that didn’t need to be patched on Tuesdays! At least Microsoft is getting with the times.

More media: Over the years, one of the key reasons to upgrade versions of Windows has been the free stuff that Billy (Gates) makes available. Vista takes the opportunity to further this capability. Windows Media Player actually turns into an effective MP3 library. WOW, imagine that! The Windows Photo Gallery finally adds competent photo library management functionality to Windows, so you can organize photos; apply metatags, titles, and ratings; and do things like light editing and printing. Hmmm…about time someone caught up to Google again. You’ll also find the expected media experience including extended DVD player features, video editing, etc. Looks like this was a heavy concentration for this Operating System, and through all this it makes me wonder if we could one day see the Google Operating System on the shelves. Any idea what we would call that?

Parental controls: Families, schools, and libraries will appreciate the increased parental controls, which let you limit access in a variety of ways. Web filtering can block specific sites, screen out objectionable content by selected type, and lock out file downloads. You can also restrict each account’s access by time of day or day of the week. I’m sure this is important to some.

Better backups: When Windows 95 first came out, the typical hard disk was, maybe, 300MB in size. Today, personal computers routinely ship with anywhere from 30GB to 400GB hard drives. And yet, the built-in data backup software in Windows has changed little in the past decade. Windows Vista boasts a much improved backup program that should help users avoid total digital meltdowns. This can be very useful, but I’m sure that 80% of windows users don’t even think about backing up their data. I would even go as far to say that half of the remaining 20% think they should, know they should, and then don’t carry through with up to date backups! Want to raise your hands and identify yourself?

Peer-to-peer collaboration: The Windows Collaboration module uses peer-to-peer technology to let Vista users work together in a shared workspace. This looks promising! I don’t really have much information beyond that. Sorry.

Quick setup: The install of Vista has supposedly been reengineered to work better and faster. I’m not sure I really care about this since it is a (cross your fingers) one time process! Do I really care in the end how quick the setup of my Operating System goes?

Keep your eyes peeled for future previews of Vista. It may not be perfect (name one software that is), but by most measures, Windows Vista is a step in a better direction. Quickly before I wrap up, here is a table comparing the Vista products to today’s standards with general pricing:

For much more information, go check out the Windows Vista Wiki, or do some searching on the internet for the opinions of others. As for me and myself, you now know what I think. What is it that you think?

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