Windows Vista is here at last. One of the largest software projects ever undertaken, Vista is indisputably a milestone—despite Microsoft's having abandoned many of its most ambitious goals for the OS—and not just for Microsoft but for the entire PC industry.Of course, Vista is not without its skeptics. PC makers say it will require more processing power, graphics capabilities, and memory than is typical of today's mainstream machines. Software vendors complain that Vista's vaunted security features are, in fact, locking them out. Users may wonder if it offers enough that's truly new to be worth the bother—particularly given that a number of Vista features and bundled applications are also available for Windows XP.
We've performed extensive, hands-on analysis of Vista and sorted out the claims to help you decide whether, or more realistically when, to make the move—and to show you what you can expect when you do
Microsoft calls Vista "a breakthrough computing experience." That's marketing hyperbole, for sure, but it's not entirely unfounded. The new OS is far more than Windows XP with a pretty new face. Many aspects of Vista are substantive improvements: stronger security, better built-in apps, networking enhancements, parental controls, and DirectX 10 graphics support, to name just a few.
As a whole, Vista feels more evolutionary than revolutionary. That's not all bad; one of Microsoft's strengths has been its commitment to backward compatibility, which continues with Vista.
Vista's real competitor, though, is Windows XP. For many users, XP is good enough. And for all the advances in Vista, it's hard to avoid seeing the things that aren't as good as they could have been.
Nor is Vista bug-free. As I assessed final code, I ran into a variety of small but annoying glitches and found plenty of features that didn't work as seamlessly as I would have liked. I can't shake the feeling that Vista's release was rushed.
So what's our verdict? Vista is good—in some respects very good—but not spectacular. Call it a nice-to-have product rather than a must-have.
If you're buying a new consumer PC this spring, it probably makes sense to get Vista. (For a few contrarian points of view, see "Why Not to Buy Vista".) Soon, there won't be much of a choice; according to Microsoft's support life cycle, retail PC buyers will have only a year after Vista's release to buy Windows XP.
If you've already got a PC running Windows XP smoothly, it's harder to see a reason to upgrade right away. You can wait until you replace your machine, or at least a few months, until Vista's kinks are worked out. (If you're curious to see how well your existing machine will support Vista, try Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor, available at www.windowsvista.com/upgradeadvisor). In the meantime, you can download some of the new software included in Vista, such as Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 11, and a desktop search utility, to enjoy some of the same capabilities you'd get in Vista itself.
For business customers, it makes sense to start evaluating Vista now, particularly since improved deployment, management, and security could lead to significant cost reductions in the long term. But you'll want to be confident about compatibility and support before you make the transition en masse. (See "Vista at Work," for more on features for businesses in Windows Vista Business and Vista Enterprise.)
Let's dive in and take a more detailed look at what Vista has to offer
Some of an operating system's crucial responsibilities include managing hardware and drive storage and providing a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) that other software can rely on. And, indeed, some of Vista's most important enhancements lie beneath the surface. Many of these improvements are security related. We've written extensively about them, and you can get the latest in "Microsoft Locks Down Security...and Roils Security Vendors".
Networking is another revamped area. Vista's new TCP/IP stack includes native IPv6 support and auto-tuning via TCP window scaling. And it has better built-in Wi-Fi support.
Vista also has a number of performance enhancers. SuperFetch tracks frequently used programs and preloads them. ReadyBoost lets you use flash memory on a high-speed USB drive as a supplemental swap file (this can be substantially faster than a spinning hard drive). ReadyDrive supports hybrid hard drives with built-in flash-memory caches. There's also a low-priority I/O mechanism that lets programs such as Windows Defender run scans in the background with less disruption to foreground activity; and Vista automatically schedules drive defragmentation.
On the whole, my experience has been positive—on a screamer system. Others have had worse luck, particularly those who skimped on RAM. The SYSmark and MobileMark benchmark tests are currently being modified for testing Vista's performance; once they're up and running, we'll post performance results at go.pcmag.com/vistaspeed.
Vista's new sleep mode is supposed to make suspending and resuming faster and more reliable. With the machines I've been testing it on, I don't sense huge benefits from the new sleep mode. Whether that's due to Vista or to third-party hardware or drivers is hard to determine.
Microsoft also made a lot of more fundamental changes in the OS kernel, which provides low-level functions such as memory management, multi-processor synchronization, and I/O scheduling. Most are intended to help improve performance, security, and reliability.
Vista also extends the Windows API by incorporating the .NET 3.0 framework, giving developers capabilities that include Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code-named Avalon), Windows Communication Framework (formerly Indigo), and Windows CardSpace (formerly InfoCard). But there's no WinFS (Windows Future Storage), the database-backed file system that was to be one of Vista's core innovations. As a result, Vista's support for tagging and relating files is less extensive than Microsoft promised back when the OS was still known by its code name, Longhorn.
