The Insider’s Guide to Windows Vista
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.
The Vista Promise
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.
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