Aesthetics
did you hate the red/green/blue look of windows xp? aka the 'preskool' look? yeah, so did i. well, its gone, for the most part. the overall look of the Vista desktop is a sleek, polished black look, resembling obsidian or onyx. it looks very nice. all browser windows, IM windows, etc, all have a transparent look around the edges, which actually looks nice despite the fact that i was such a harsh critic of it a month ago. browser windows even seem to 'flip' backwards slightly when they were closed, which also looks fairly nice. the start button, as well as the close, minimize, and restore buttons in browser windows are all black unless the mouse pointer hovers over them, in which case, the start button has a green glow, the close button has a red glow, and the minimize and restore buttons have a bright blue glow. it comes off really well. even icons such as folders, my computer (which is jsut called 'computer' now, as to stop confusion) and the recycle bin have all been redesigned, as can be seen in the screenshots below.
Ease Of Use:
overall, i have found Microsoft Vista to be very similar in ease of use to Windows XP Home, yet far easier to use than predecessors such as Server 2003, Windows ME, or Windows 2000. the remnant of color coding certain buttons still makes learning Windows fairly simple to those who are unfamiliar with computers in general. so you can still tell your grandmother to click the green button in order to find Solitaire. the windows explorer function has been very simplified to make browsing between files very easy. the address bar in WinExe, instead of displaying something like C:\program files\ea games... displays rather, all the folders and subdirectories that youre currently in instead of a file address. so say were were ten folders deep into a file and wanted to go back to '(my) computer.' instead of pressing the back button ten times, simply go up to the address bar and click 'computer.' also, determining free space in folders and hard drives has been simplified due to the integration of bar graphs showing used drive space (see screenshot below).
Improvements Over XP and Other Predecessors
i think its huge understatement to say that Microsoft Vista is an improvement over Windows XP, even in this beta stage. Vista is in no way as much of a resource or memory hog as Windows XP, and i found its memory usage comparable to that of Windows 2000 Professional, give or take a few megabytes. information retrieval on and offline is very swift and prompt compared to all of Vista's predecessors. i have had a problem with overall stability, however. i noticed that Vista tends to bog down when i have too many programs or files open at one given time. this is one place that i noticed XP and 2000 to be superior, although, im going to attest the lag factor to the fact that Vista is simply a beta build right now. as far as long term stability, however, Vista excelled. i had my computer idle for 14 hours, and Vista was jsut as responsive as when i'd left.
Internet Explorer v7
everyone knows how much i hate Internet Explorer, and that i favor Mozilla Firefox over everything else, but i must say that the 7th version of Internet Explorer is finally starting to show some promise. first of all, they have integrated tabbed browsing, which is my favorite feature from Firefox. what tabbed browsing allows you to do is have multiple windows or 'tabs' open in jsut one browser window, thus conserving system resources while allowing you to go from window to window by clicking on the window or 'tab' you want to view (see screenshot below). microsoft has also implemented a popup blocker in IEv7 that actually works for the most part, which is what mostly impressed me. IEv7 also contributed to the stability issue of Vista in that having too many tabs open at once (around 10-12 tabs on 512mb RAM) will cause the system to lock up and eventually crash. IEv7 is quite nice, although, i still recommend using Mozilla Firefox due to security reasons.
well this is my preliminary review of Microsoft Vista, Beta 1. as i have said previously, my review in no way reflects how the final version of the operating system will function, since i am using a beta copy of the OS. also, for the record, im still a Linux convert. i just felt that it was my duty as a computer geek and aspiring hacker to requisition a copy of the Vista Beta and test it for myself and on the behalf of others. if you have any questions about Vista, such as functions, programs, compatibility, or installing the OS itself, feel free to IM or email me. thanks goes out to the forums at winvistasecrets for helping me figure out settings and such.
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