Windows Vista - An Overview

By: Lucy Bartlett

After a gap of nearly 5 years, Microsoft released the latest
version of Windows which is named as Vista. With a name change
from Longhorn to Vista, the stable version of Windows is
expected to be released during November 2006. The beta version
of this software is already available as a free download. If you
have a lot of patience or a very high speed internet connection
then you can download Vista which is nearly 2.5 GB in size.

Microsoft promises that Vista will have plenty of new features
which includes updated graphical user interface (GUI), Windows
DVD Maker - a new creation tool for multimedia - and totally
revamped audio, print and networking sub-systems. Vista will
make use of peer-to-peer technology to make file sharing between
networked computers easier. With the inclusion of Virtual PC in
Vista, Microsoft claims that running previous versions of
Windows simultaneously on the same machine will not be a problem.

The developers can make use of the Net Framework version 3.0
introduced in Vista. This version is claimed to be easier to
work with than the traditional Windows API.

The most common criticism of Windows XP is its unstable security
and its inability to protect the system from buffer overflows,
viruses and malware. The stated goal of Vista is to improve the
security considerably and make the system protected from the
invasion of malwares and virus threats.

Vista comes with improved performance of Windows Shell, easier
and faster search functions, a sidebar resembling Apple's
Spotlight, desktop gadgets for applets, the latest version of
Internet Explorer - the controversial web browser of Microsoft
-, Windows Media Player 11, specialized User Account Control,
built in Firewall to control and monitor outgoing and incoming
traffic, Windows Defender, a Windows version of anti-spyware and
Windows mail which will replace the existing Outlook Express.

Microsoft claims Vista will help in improving the performance of
the PC in certain key areas which includes starting up, response
to user actions, and waking up. The start up is going to be very
quick and while background processing of scripts and
applications are executed, the other desired tasks can be
performed by the users.

The new sleep state provision in Vista has combined features for
standby mode, data protection and low power usage during
hibernation.

If you want to try Vista on your desktop computer then your
system should have a processor which should be at least 800MHZ
speed, 512 MB RAM and have the latest version of any good
graphic card capable of executing DirectX version 9 or above.
This is only a minimum requirement. For optimum results a better
processor - above 1.2GHZ is needed.

About the author:
Lucy Bartlett is a proud contributing author. Find more articles
here. For more
info visit Windows
Vista or Vista Products