Vista

Found some info and Vista if you are intrested. You might have seen it before, but it reveals some things about Vista that might intrest you.

sk any three "techies" what Microsoft's new operating system (Vista) will be like, and you'll likely get three separate answers. One might tell you it is a major overhaul of Windows, like Windows 95 was. A second may tell you it was going to be a major overhaul, but many of the "cool" features have been dropped. A third techie might tell you he doesn't know what Windows Vista is, because it changes all the time.

So who is right? All of them, but the last two have out of date information. Vista was going to be a minor revision, and then a major overhaul, and features were pulled, then features were included after all, and other features were added. It is a little confusing, it might be a good idea to take a short look at the history of Vista.

A Little Longhorn/Vista History

Vista started out under the code name "Longhorn". Originally, it was to be a fairly minor revision to Windows XP, which was still fairly new. It was planned to be a Windows XP Second Edition type of change and was expected to be out in about a year and a half.

Then Microsoft reconsidered and decided that even with Windows XP being fairly new, another major overhaul of Windows was needed. This decision was likely in response to a number of factors. For one thing Apple's OS X had come out for the Macintosh - and it appears that a number of changes Microsoft decided to make to Windows were in reaction to OS X. For instance, Microsoft planned to improve the User Interface appearance (Aero) which seemed to be a response to Aqua, the UI theme that OS X used. And Microsoft's improved Avalon graphics engine seemed to be a response to significant graphics improvements incorporated in OS X. Microsoft also planned to improve Windows search system, which was likely in response to the Macintosh "Sherlock" search engine and/or a response to the Google and Yahoo search engines.

The decision to overhaul Windows in such a major way was also likely due to new technologies coming online (video, audio, internet) and to security issues. Microsoft had been dealing with numerous security issues and it was time for major changes.

So Longhorn became Windows Vista – a major revision to Windows. There was to be a new storage system (WinFS), changes to the User Interface look and features (Aero) an improved graphics engine (Avalon), improved security (Palladium), improved internet capabilities, and so on.

Longhorn/Vista was to have shipped in 2003. However in the 2003 – 2004 timeframe, Microsoft was busy announcing and pulling Vista features. And then, the schedule for Vista slipped more - but in the meantime Microsoft included many of the features that were to be dropped or released later. So the coming Vista release (late 2006/early 2007) will be the full featured Windows overhaul originally announced. Except, Microsoft hasn't delivered on everything they originally promised – but they added many other features in exchange.

Confusion Persists

As I mentioned at the start of the article, there is still a lot of confusion. Much is this is due to the fact that Microsoft has changed/redefined Vista so much. Also, Microsoft was rather quiet about the fact that many "dropped" Vista features will be included after all. Finally, there is a lot of misinformation on the internet. You can find numerous websites that haven't been revised in the past two years, still listing the "latest news" as Vista features being dropped. And many people still incorrectly post this as a fact.

Shows the truth about Vista.