Come Back Vista, All Is Forgiven

As I've perused Newsvine over the last week or two, I've recieved the impression people are rather dissatisfied with Microsoft's new operating system, Windows Vista. Ignoring the fact that most of them haven't actually tried it, it still seems people are biased against it - perhaps because of the various delays, or because of the numerous similarities with Mac OS X, seen by many as a superior operating system.

I'd like to explain Vista's improvements over Windows XP. Obviously, as Microsoft like to tout, there's the much-improved visuals. Windows doesn't look like Duplo any more - it's sleek and polished. While mostly eye-candy - the running waterfall desktop in Vista Ultimate is purely a resource hog - the visuals do translate into an improvement from a usability perspective in one instance: the Flip3D feature, similar to Mac OS X's Expose, is a much better way of flipping through application windows than the standard Alt+Tab interface. However, while many seem to think the improved functionality ends there, there's a lot more going on.

Windows has traditionally provided three main interfaces for doing what you want to do: Explorer, Internet Explorer and Media Player. Because both IE and Media Player were both updated and released before Vista, people have cast them off as upgrades to XP, when in reality they were both developed for Vista and then released to XP users in order to improve the beta testing process. All three elements have enjoyed huge updates, most notably Internet Explorer 7, which while still far behind other popular browsers, is much closer to usable, as XP users have no doubt noticed. I feel obliged at this moment to state that while it is a massive improvement over IE 6, it is still lacking from a developer's standpoint.

Explorer and Media Player have progressed similarly. Windows Media Player, commonly known as WMP, has received a GUI overhaul, but no real features save the music stores have been added. Visually, it is stunning; functionally, it has always sat in second place when compared to other, more enthusiast-oriented media players such as Winamp.

Windows Explorer, however, has received some advances, taken from Apple's Finder. The Search bar to the right is an obvious copy, but the other main similarity is more subtle. The address bar divides the path into its individual folders, any of which can be changed through a drop-down menu to easily access other children of the current directory's parent folders, as well as allowing the user to edit it manually. This can possibly be viewed as an improvement over Finder's column approach to viewing files, as it still allows you to view thumbnails or file details. On the other hand, the Mac method of changing directory is slightly quicker. Again, the visuals have been much improved, but functionally, apart from the details mentioned previously, it is very similar to its predecessor.

There are, of course, brand new attractions in MS's brand new OS. The first I noticed was the Windows Sidebar, which seems to be based on a combination of the popular Desktop Sidebar and Mac OS's Dashboard. Currently, there are hardly any useful gadgets available for the sidebar, but I expect that as with the Dashboard, as time passes, it will be able to do more than tell you the time and the weather.

Next was Windows Defender. I'm not actually sure what this does, as it hasn't found any malicious software on my computer so far, but it seems to be a virus/spyware scanner. Of course, one would hope it isn't necessary, due to Microsoft's new User Account Control. Essentially, the UAC asks permission for every administrative task, from installing applications to changing the date and time. To stop malware from simply clicking the "Continue" button when you're asked to do something stupid, it switches over to a new "desktop", which software cannot access, each time it does this. Unfortunately, this takes quite a long time if the computer is busy... the general consensus on UAC is that is is very secure, and very irritating. Unfortunately, its annoyances may cause users to click the Continue button every time they see it, without reading the dialog properly. If the problem is not somehow rectified - for example, by not switching over to the secure desktop until it is fully loaded and ready - it seems it will be an ineffective solution to the growing problem of viruses etc. in the Windows world. Unix-based operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X have their own methods of securing the main system, but as they have had more time to mature, they are less of an inconvenience than Microsoft's UAC.

Mac users among the readership will no doubt be screaming at me for praising Vista for what Mac OS X has been doing for the last thirty-seven years. It's true: Microsoft has ripped off many of OS X's features, right down to the search feature in the Start menu that is incredibly reminiscent of Spotlight. This isn't a bad thing: if one person invents the wheel, should the next copy him or spend a year puzzling it out himself? As advances are made in the world of software, they should be shared amongst developers; why reinvent the petrol engine when you can work on nuclear fusion?

Microsoft have spent the last five years labouring on the newest edition of the most popular operating system in the world. Over this time, they have cut several exciting features out of Vista, to be postponed to the next iteration. Vista is not as big an upgrade as it should be, but it is worth upgrading to. It's not perfect - far from it - but aesthetically and functionally, it's a major step forward, and from a security standpoint, it's finally caught up to Unix-based OSes... assuming people take heed of the messages. From your perspective, it may not be as good as Mac OS or Linux, but you can't argue, as some people have been trying to do, that it's a waste of space. In my own humble opinion, it's not the best operating system on the market, but once the driver issues have been rectified, I'm never going back to XP.

Duplicated on my blog.

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