Andrews Family

By Vista, I mean Windows Vista, the new operating system from Microsoft which is expected to release in early 2007. They currently have it available for people to beta test and I decided that I’d give it a spin on my laptop. I installed it last weekend and so far so good. Windows Vista has a lot of new features, which makes sense if you consider that Windows XP was first released in 2001. There are a lot of sites which describe and discuss the new features, so I won’t be going into all of the features in great detail. But I’m planning on blogging on some of the features that I think would be interesting to the typical home user in upcoming posts. Future topics will include: Parental Controls, User Access Control, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker DVD, Windows Mail, Windows Calendar, and more.

But before I dig into Vista itself, I’ve got a little commentary on some interesting trends in computing in general that merit discussion. A computer’s operating system is its foundation, which allows it to do all of the basics like running programs and accessing the hardware like the hard drive. The two main operating systems are Microsoft Windows, Vista being the latest, and Apple Mac OS X. There are a lot of similarities between features in both. Beyond the basic tasks generally associated with an operating system, they seem to be incorporating typical tasks that users expect of their computer. For example, most home users use their computer for email, calendar, contacts, music, photos, videos, making slideshows and DVDs, and surfing the web. Microsoft and Apple have both figured out that people expect those things to be "a part" of the computer. Now Vista incorporates all of those things into the OS or applications that come as part of the OS. So for a typical home user, there would be very little additional software that you would need to install. Looking forward, for things that aren’t built into the operating system, a lot of these additional tasks will be handled by web-based applications which you access through your web browser. These type of applications are known as Web 2.0 and include sites like www.writely.com which I’ve posted on here. So I’m betting that in the near future things will either be built into the computer’s operating system or you’ll use an online application.

Incorporating more things into the operating system isn’t new. Bundling Internet Explorer too closely into Windows got Microsoft into anti-trust trouble before. Now critics complain that Vista doesn’t include virus protection, while security related software companies complain that Vista’s security features aren’t open enough. There is a need for a balance between useful features and anti-trust, but for now you just can’t please everyone.