End in sight for Windows Vista

London, (GUARDIAN NEWS SERVICE): Microsoft has been through a bad patch, but with its Windows Vista finally nearing roll-out, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The moving train wreck that is Windows Vista finally began to approach itsdestination last week with the release of another major test version: beta2. This should mean it is ``feature complete'', with only bug fixes,performance tuning and a final polish before it reaches businesses at theend of this year, and consumers at the start of next year.
Looked at objectively, from a suitable distance, through half-closedeyes, it looks good. In particular, the graphics are often stunning whenrunning the new Aero Glass user interface.
The white unpainted areas and jaggedy lines often visible in Windows XPseem to be a thing of the past. In fact, you get something closer to thegraphics performance of a good game, and for the same reason - the graphicscard is doing most of the work, instead of leaving it to the mainprocessor. As a result, Microsoft says going back to a ``lower'' version ofWindows can mean it slows down instead of speeding up, because the load isthrown back on to the CPU.
The new transparency - the Glass that has been added to the Aerointerface - looks nice but may not last. At least it's controlled from asliding scale, so you can set how much transparency you want.
But there is still a lot to do, and beta 2 desperately needs thecomputer equivalent of the house doctor Ann Maurice - a function Steve Jobsperforms at Apple - to get the dozens of programming teams to throw out thecrap, or at least get their corners, rules and spaces reasonablyconsistent.
Still, Microsoft hauled more than one hundred journalists and analystsfrom 15 countries to a Vista reviewers' workshop in Seattle, so we couldget our copies of the new beta from the fair hands of Jim Allchin, who hasrun Windows development for more than a decade. He duly appeared on stagewith the first box of beta 2's, so we got them before the PC makers atWinHEC, the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Not that they were anyuse until an access code appeared in our mailboxes later.
Allchin then gave a memorable goodbye speech, using words such as``naive'', ``hugely painful'' and ``humbled'' because once Vista ships,he's being replaced by Steve Sinofsky, the current head of MicrosoftOffice.
Having taken Microsoft from zero market share to a market-leadingposition in the server operating system market, Allchin has earned hiscrust. But, as he admitted, ``I was naive about how big a deal the attacks[on Windows XP] were going to be''. Being handed a PC that was so infestedwith malware, even he could not clean it up, was ``a humbling experience'',he confessed.
A lot of the work that has gone into Vista is invisible because it hasbeen devoted to cleaning out insecurities, hardening services andsandboxing applications such as Internet Explorer 7+. Vista now seems muchbetter than XP SP2, which was dramatically better than XP. Whether it'senough, only time and the attentions of thousands of criminal, commercialmalware writers will tell.
A lot more work is equally invisible, because it caters for the needs ofVista's biggest and most important market: businesses. For example, Vistanow installs as a single image, which is simply copied across, rather thanas a sequence of separate files. Big companies like to construct and deploytheir own operating system image - typically including Windows and theirmain applications - but Microsoft's system is novel in that it can installan image on an existing hard drive without destroying applications anddata. These can be picked up later.
This also explains why all the versions of Vista, from Home Basic to theUltimate kitchen sink version, appear to take up the same 15GB of harddrive space. You get the whole thing, and can upgrade from one version toanother just by entering a code, without doing another installation or along download.
It's clever, but risky. Decisions have not been taken, but I was givento understand Microsoft was unlikely to ship the full image in countrieswith a high incidence of software piracy.
Vista also uses Windows PE (pre-installation environment) and, accordingto Windows' client group product manager Stella Chernyak, it canself-repair an otherwise unbootable system about 80% of the time. Since themain costs of an enterprise operating system are installation and support,Chernyak argued, Vista could save companies money.
And from a corporate point of view, it is extremely important Microsoftis launching new versions of Windows and Office at the same time, then anew version of Windows Server. After years without a significant upgrade infunctionality, companies will be able to make one great leap forward. Thiswill obviously be very convenient, and money could pour into Microsoft'salready overflowing coffers.
For those of us who have been following this particular development fromthe storage principles that appeared in the 1990s (Cairo) through to theLonghorn ideas that Microsoft showed even before the release of Windows XP,Vista looks a bit of a disaster. If Microsoft had delivered what itpromised in, say, 2004, it would have led the market. Instead, it'soffering much less, and delivering it much later - probably after three oreven more versions of, say, Mac OS X.
But, of course, we're an insignificant number of people with littlemoney and even less influence. Vista is probably going to ship about 500mcopies in 2007-08, with more than 10,000 PC manufacturers pre-installing iton almost every machine they make, across the four corners of the earth.And paying Microsoft about $25bn in cash.
I suspect most of these naive users will find a lot to like in Vista.They will like the clean interface and the speed of Windows Media Player11, the extra security and enhanced features of Internet Explorer 7+ (quicktabs, RSS feed detection, page zooming, print-to-fit), and the vastlyimproved Start menu. They will love the way little screen images pop upfrom the taskbar, and the way they can mouse-wheel rapidly through screensin Flip 3D mode - with videos still running. Some less jaded users willenjoy the gadgets - clock, slide show, weather information etc - that showin the Vista Sidebar, as per Konfabulator, or on accessory screens.
At least the geekier ones may discover other little features, such asthe ability to link two PCs via Wi-Fi, in Vista's MeetingSpace, the abilityto use plug-in USB thumb drives to add to their PC's memory (ReadyBoost),hard drives with built in Flash memory (ReadyDrives), and support forthings like 802.11i networking and Internet Protocol IPv6.
Vista will not get people dancing in the streets - except maybe Allchin- but it will probably keep the Windows market rolling for a few moreyears. Microsoft has certainly been through a bad patch, but the worst maybe over.