I finally got around to installing Windows Vista on a test box (HP tc4200) and I'll have to say, I'm quite impressed! That's mostly because I've seen previous builds of Longhorn and I could only kindly describe those as catastrophically disappointing. The interface in Vista Beta 1 is
greatly improved over previous builds. In fact, after tinkering with it for a few hours, I can pretty comfortably say it is more intuitive and aesthetically attractive than XP.
You might have noticed that I don't see the Vista interface as a revolutionary jump to replace XP, but I don't think it should be either. Users will feel familiar with the look, even though there are tweaks in almost every screen and dialog box. Lets take a look at some of the differences.
Control Panel (default view):
Parental Controls (while I can definitely see the market for this, I'm sure the "Collect information about computer usage" will have a LOT of people asking questions):
Trying to keep your "Hot Coffee" decaf?
We can see in Device Manager that the driver library team for Vista has a few hours of overtime available for the taking:
Computer Management looks mostly the same, the Event Viewer menu has been reworked:
Windows Explorer has had a major rework. File and folder grouping are prominent features and quite easy to use. The directory structure has also changed somewhat:
User files are now housed in "C:\Users" instead of "C:\Documents and Settings\..."
The new "C:\Boot" folder is a departure from XP and 2000:
The File Copy dialog seems to start counting at zero. Well, they have to have
something to fix for Beta 2! (I wonder where Beta 0 was):
Thumbnail images in the copy/replace dialog box add a nice (and helpful) touch:
One of the nice things about Vista is the user rights assignment. One of the reasons Microsoft has gotten so many security and stability dings is because almost everyone sets themselves up and everyone else in their family as an Administrator. This gives that user, and process running under that user, way more control over the system than it probably needs. I mean, does the six year old paying Blue's Clues need user rights to uninstall a Service Pack or to install any new software? One of the features of Windows Vista is the use of a 'Virtual Registry' for Limited rights users, so they can't do any (ok, as much) real damage to a system, since they're not actually making changes to the core system registry. That's also why the dialog box above mentions "programs designed prior to Windows XP or Windows 2000 might not work properly with limited accounts". The virtual registry function in Vista should work fine with these applications, but older applications may not interface with this implementation. Running these older apps as administrator should work fine though, since the virtual registry use is replaced with direct registry permissions. Below, you can see the screenshot for granting a user Administrator rights, it is very clean and straightforward:
I was glad to see Grisoft's AVG Antivirus (the free version) running just perfectly in MS Vista: 
It's just too bad that Vista didn't seem to notice how perfectly AVG was running. Maybe we'll just chalk this up to Beta 1, since the Windows XP Security Center notices AVG and gives it props: 
This was one disappointment... Outlook Express 6?! Are you kidding me? Hasn't this been around since like, Istanbul was Constantinople? I expect the next version to look remarkably like Thunderbird... I'm psychic that way: 
One little annoyance, the Recycle Bin sure is pretty, but it ain't all that bright. The Recycle Bin icon never refreshed itself. I had to actually perform an F5 on the desktop to get the Recycle Bin to repaint to either show it was full or empty:
