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WINDOWS VISTA IS RELEASED

Brian Grainger

So, the time has finally arrived. On November 30th, Microsoft released their latest operating system, Windows Vista. In the UK an event was held at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium. However, there has been so little media coverage that I don't know how it went!

Currently only available in Enterprise Edition for large businesses, Vista was simultaneously released with the latest versions of Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Exchange. The general public will have to wait until January 30th 2007 before Vista is available to them.

Quite why Microsoft are launching the Enterprise Edition first is beyond me. Enterprise business is unlikely to adopt Vista until forced, or until the first service pack has appeared. Perhaps they are trying to get some final testing done and bugs fixed before the big release at the end of January!

Initial reaction on the web is mixed. Some love it - some hate it. I was amused by one report which said it booted up quicker than Windows XP. Of course it does - its a brand new installation, whereas the Windows XP has no doubt been run a few years and picked up all the trash that slows boot up time. Wait a little while and Windows Vista will be just as slow. Mind you, I guess this reviewer had some pretty nifty hardware because it was a dog when the beta was run at Stevenage ICPUG.

From an Enterprise point of view, the Office update may be more useful. This has the capability to interface with other Enterprise software such as SAP and, possibly, Oracle database. Office 2007 could be used as a friendly front end to all the Enterprise applications. As Microsoft says, the Office interface is well known, whereas Enterprise Applications with their individual interfaces need training time. Bringing everything under one interface will be beneficial to the Enterprise.

Of course, most consumers will not actually buy Windows Vista. It will appear on all PCs sold from February 2007. Does that mean it is not a good idea to buy a PC for Christmas? The marketing strategy of Microsoft has been quite ingenious.

Recently, Microsoft announced that anyone who bought a PC, (from October 26th), with Windows XP Media Centre edition would potentially get a free upgrade to the Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. At the same time, new PCs with the Windows XP Home Edition would be entitled to an upgrade to the Windows Vista Home Basic Edition. However, this would be subject to a charge. All these offers would be via the retailers, not Microsoft.

Now, it is generally regarded that the Home Basic Edition is not worth upgrading for. It is not hard to see why all the adverts for PCs recently are suddenly touting Windows XP Media Centre Edition, whatever the type of PC. There may be one cheap PC on offer but if you look at the small print it will have Windows XP Home Edition on it - now you know why it's cheap. Caveat Emptor.

One other thing to bear in mind, if buying a new PC, is that although it may be capable of running Windows Vista Premium it may not run all its features unless the hardware meets sufficient requirements. The feature that gets mentioned a lot is the new Aero interface. In order to run this Microsoft suggests a minimum of an 800MHz processor, 1GB RAM and a suitable graphic card with 128MB RAM. As a rule of thumb, doubling Microsoft requirements makes the software run adequately from a user point of view.

I am not sure what the Home Basic Edition contains. I wonder if this is a version without Windows Media Player, to satisfy the European Union. If so, you can see how Microsoft's offer policy ensures that nobody will buy it!

No doubt, as we approach January 30th, the hype will increase. Unless everyone stops buying PCs, Windows Vista will be judged a 'success'. In the Windows world, I still run Windows 98 and Office 97 on my desktop and it does pretty much all I want to do. I could do with a new PC though! Will there be one for sale without Windows Vista on it?

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