Vista, another Win ME?

Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical

It’s often said that Windows ME was a flop - something like a build up to XP. Is Vista a build up to future versions of Windows? Heck, one of the Longhorn “pillars” were dropped: WinFS (new file system). I’m not sure how much of Palladium (a security system, one of the 4 pillars of Longhorn) is implemented in Vista though. Check here for some info about Palladium and TCPA.

Let’s face the facts, Vista isn’t revolutionary. There aren’t any features that make it an absolute must have. Sure, Aero looks great, the new performance oriented features helps a little, but nothing really, really compelling. If you’re talking about .NET 3.0, they run on Windows XP too.

As for security, that’s one thing we’ll need to wait and see. Hopefully, Microsoft will fix UAC by Vista SP1, and improve Windows Defender. A recent article (I forgot where) mentioned that it failed miserably in detecting spyware. If Vista is secure enough to render anti-virus apps useless, then it’s truly a compelling reason to upgrade.

We also need to see what kind of applications that will take advantage of Vista only features. Some of these Vista only (as in available in Vista by default, and not in XP) are like saved searches, file tagging, file preview (developers can create their own previewing mechanisms) and a variety of other “little features”. Each of these little features may be no big deal, but combining all of them into some neat application, that makes the upgrade to Vista compelling enough.

InformationWeek highlights some features in Office specific to Vista - this gives everyone a little idea what’s compelling about Vista. It highlights integrated search, security (BitLocker), RSS feeds, auxillary displays (SideShow) and gadgets.

Interestingly enough, this page has some brief information about Fiji and Vienna, future Windows versions. The most intersting about Vienna is this:

The current interface will be completely stripped, no more explorer shells, and taskbars. No start menu. Probably no toolbars, or menus (which already started with Vista).

From a user interface designer perspective, that’s gonna be so, so cool. It means that the OS and applications will become very task oriented. It doesn’t show users a long list of commands that a user can pick, but rather, intelligent enough to figure out what the user wants to do.

So, all in all.. will Vista be another Win ME? I would say NO. Slowly take a look at the videos on Channel 9 about Vista. You’ll realize that there’s a lot of development potential for Vista. The success of an OS isn’t purely about the OS itself, it’s about the applications that run on it. Why else you think Microsoft spends so much money, producing industry leading IDEs like Visual Studio?

Permalink | February 2nd, 2007

2 Responses to “Vista, another Win ME?”

  1. Brigitte Says:
    February 10th, 2007 at 3:05 pm

    I recently bought a new HP and there’s an offer for a free upgrade to Vista. So I think, “why not?” It does look better and if it has the same functionality, might as well - it’s free.

    Also, I’m wondering, how did you create that tag cloud of yours? I love it. And this layout is gorgeous~!!

  2. Jonathan Ng Says:
    February 11th, 2007 at 11:01 am

    Brigitte, I use the Ultimate Tagging Warrior Wordpress plugin.

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