Vista – the OS upgrade we had to have

Once you see Windows Vista in action, you’ll want it. It’s Microsoft’s best operating system yet, and it’s arriving tomorrow!

We all know that Vista has been a long time in the oven, and despite some cooking troubles earlier in the piece, the bell has already rung to signal that the package has been taken out and is cooling on the kitchen bench before it’s served up to millions of hungry paying guests worldwide.

The first big surprise, after all the stopping and starting, is that it works, and works well. I’m still running Vista RC1 with Office 2007 B2TR, and despite occasional mini pauses if I have too many programs open and tabs open in different browsers, I’m having a much better Windows experience with Vista than I’ve had with any previous version, and certainly would not go back to Windows XP.

The problems I’m experience have been reported by a number of reviewers as fixed in the release version of Vista, and with the release date only two days away on November 30, where I will be attending a media event and receiving an evaluation copy, I’ll soon find out for myself just how much faster and better it is than the RC1 I have now been running for months.

While other reviews look at Aero, memory requirements, the 64 bit and 32 bit versions, whether UAC is turned on, or off and other such detail, I’m going to give you a quick report on what using Vista is like, and how this will help the people that form the largest part of Microsoft’s user base: everyday consumers who know about browsing the Internet, doing email, creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations, but not much else.

Microsoft’s user base of consumers even includes many who are not sure what they are doing when they are browsing, or sending email or any of those things, including finding features in Word 2003 or previous editions.

What consumers need – everyday consumers that is, not network administrations, IT consultants, CIOs or other really tech-savvy people–  is an operating system that tries to make it at easy to use as possible for everyday people who don’t want to get under the hood, so to speak, and fiddle with all of the settings in too great a manner.

Of course network admins, consultants and CIOs probably want the simpler interface too, as long as there’s an easy way to get back to more powerful controls, and for the most part, this is as possible as it ever was.

What consumers want is a system that ‘just works’, much like the Mac ‘just works’ for many people. Those people still have to learn a system, but the Mac’s system is easier to learn.

Microsoft is finally realising that people don’t really care about dual-core processors or 64 bits or 4Gb of RAM or a terabyte network attached storage hard drive. It’s benefits, not features, that are truly important to most people. What can I do with the system, what does it let me do that I couldn’t do before, or couldn’t do easily?

We all know that businesses will wait until their next upgrade cycle, and that many consumers will wait too. But as Vista is launched, and people get the opportunity to see it in stores, see more reviews, play with it on friend’s computers, and start seeing Vista-only computers on sale, consumers will find it hard to avoid giving Vista a spin. They’ll want to try it.

And once you’ve tried it, you’ll want it.

While Vista is yet to officially launch, with discoveries of any major problems or issues yet to come, Vista is the promise of a better computing experience that just works. And in the modern era, they just want something that will let them easily accomplish their everyday digital tasks, something that Apple has been very successful with through the Mac platform and cool software like iLife.

People want to:

- easily find information on the Internet
- easily use Internet services
- easily use email and communication with others
- easily find information on their computers with built-in fast search
- easily transfer photos from their digital camera into a photo sorting program that’s easy to use
- easily print photos on their home printer
- easily transfer music to a dedicated mp3 player
- easily trasnder music, photos, videos and more to a digital media player
- easily play games
- easily stay protected from online dangers
- easily and automatically maintaining their computer with auto backup and defrag
- easily stay organised with a calendar
- easily copy video from their video camera, and burn it to a DVD
- easily stay in touch with others through instant messaging, voice calls and video calls
- easily use a separate graphics tablet to handwrite into programs
- easily draw with the better precision of a graphic tablet’s stylus over a mouse
- easily watch and record live TV
- even easily talk to their computer and see it convert speech into text before their eyes
- and much more.

Why should any of this be hard? Windows Vista is an operating system that seeks to make all of the above, and more, much easier and more accessible than in any previous Windows version.

Vista’s graphics are often described as very Mac like, but surely, that’s a good thing. Vista is looking better than it ever has, with graphical niceties that are very 21st century.

The new graphics are impossible to ignore, beautiful to see and will make you want to make absolutely sure that any new computer you buy between now and January 30, if you are doing such a thing, is absolutely Aero compatible. But after Vista’s January launch, only the very cheapest computers will have any issue with Aero, and by the end of 2007, will it be possible to buy a new computer that can’t run Aero?

Little improvements are visible almost everywhere. While some things are different from the way they are done in Vista to the way they were done in XP, it’s taken me no time to figure them all out and become very used to them.

As has been pointed out, while there are some inconsistencies here and there, the overall experience is one of great improvement in lots of little ways over XP and all the previous Windows user interfaces.

For beginners, Vista will be simpler and more intuitive, right down to having little things like a search bar in the control panel, so if you’re looking for ‘printers’, and you can’t seem to find which section it’s in or section it’s under, you can just type in the word ‘printers’ and up will come the printer icon for you to double click. Indeed, the inbuilt-search and automatic defrag and automatic backup capabilities of Vista alone are long overdue omissions.

Microsoft’s ‘Welcome Center’ is also chock-full of what seems to actually be useful information this time around. Those ‘help and troubleshooting centres’ always seemed to take you around in circles, never offering any real help.

Vista is changing this too, with the whole integrated experience designed not only to really put an easy-to-use yet powerful operating system in your hands, but also to change the way you think about computers and Windows itself. That’s a tall order, one that Apple have achieved with the Mac. Microsoft wants it too.

Vista is all about making the software work for you. While Microsoft won’t promise you’ll never experience another crash, Vista is stable, it’s easy to use, it’s fun to use and it’s a much nicer place to live than Windows XP.

The final verdict (for now):

Vista’s official business release on Nov. 30 and January 30 won’t hold any big surprises for those who choose to stay with Windows XP or another operating system. But for those who make the switch, whether at or near launch time, or after several months to see any bugs ironed out, plenty of good surprises await.

Windows Vista is not another Windows ME. It’s Microsoft’s best operating system yet, and on November 30, it will finally be here for those that really want it, with January 30 the day for everyone else. Windows users need a new version, with XP showing its age.

The only question now is what Apple will do, now that its best chance in a generation is here to capture more market share than ever before. A leopard can be seen hiding among the the trees of Microsoft’s Vista, ready to pounce.

Could Apple possibly release it early at Macworld, stealing Vista’s thunder? Whatever Apple does, Windows Vista is the upgrade that we had to have, and it’s finally here!