Pac Daddy: Microsoft Windows VISTA

Today's the last day for our Windows VISTA training. After this, its back to my regular dose of stress in the office. Let's not entertain that thought while I still have my days off in between. Wooozzzaaahh....Ü

Anyway, I just wanted to share what I have learned from the training. VISTA is the next OS that windows will be releasing this 2007. Right now, I only have praises for this new OS since using it these past few days. It still is user-friendly but with some added spunk! Pardon me for sounding technical in this blog.Ü

There are 6 versions in all for VISTA (and their counterparts) namely, BETA (still BETA), Home Basic (XP Home), Home Premium (XP Pro), Business (MCE), Enterprise (Windows 2003 Server), and Ultimate (no predecessor). If you are thinking which version is the best, I would have to say VISTA Ultimate because it has all the features of all Windows VISTA versions. Must be a marketing strategy of Microsoft or they really just want to to cater to the customer's needs.Ü

First thing that you would notice would be there is no longer a Start button. It was replaced by the Pearl, the round button with the Windows logo in it. Sounds a little lame but it actually looks cool since it does not eat much space on the taskbar. Also, when you go to the All Programs menu, it no longer opens to the right.

Screenshot of the desktop I was using during the training.
VISTA also has the ability to edit the pictures you save. You can adjust the exposure, contrast, brightness even fix red eyes with out using a a third party editor such as Photoshop. Of course it would not be as good.Ü

VISTA Photo Editing
VISTA is already equipped with IE7. However, this IE7 not only has tabbed browsing like Mozilla. It also has Quick Tabs, wherein you will be able to see all of the websites you are surfing similar to looking your picture via thumbnail view.

IE7 with Tabbed Browsing and Quick Tabs
Two more features that amazed me were the Aero display and the 3D Flip. In the previous operating system versions of Microsoft, the windows have a solid colored border and you can only change its colors. With the Aero display, not only will you be able to change the colors, the transparency of the borders can also be adjusted depending on how much you want it to be!

Aero Display
We have been used to pressing Alt+TAB key in cycling through the windows that we have open. Eventhough they also made improvements on this shortcut by showing you thumbnails of the windows instead of just icons, Microsoft decided to go a step farther. VISTA is introducing the 3D Flip. By pressing the Windows_Key+TAB, you would also be cycling through your open windows, only this time you are looking at a 3 dimensional display. What's more amazing is that, you will also be able to see what's going on in each window. For example, you are watching a video from You Tube and you also have IE and MS Word open. When you cycle through those windows via the 3D Flip, you will still see the video you were watching running in the background! Amazing, isn't it?Ü

3D Flip
I think the only draw back is its demanding system requirements. You need to have at least 1GB of memory, 15GB free hard drive space, 1 GHz processor and 128MB video card that is Directx9 and WDDM (Windows Display Drivers Model) compatible. Now that's a lot to ask for just the OS! Too bad for those with only 40GB hard drive. You won't be able to install much after VISTA. (Selle and Barry... I think its time to upgrade.Ü)

Its recovery and troubleshooting tools are also way better than XPs. System restore can now be run through GUI even by going to the VISTA DVD. Missing system files (dll files) are now also easy to fix. Performance and Reliability monitors are also now available for users to see why their system is running slow or what software is causing the problem.

VISTA now has Processor, Memory, Network and Disc usage monitoring
Here are more screenshots of VISTA and its features. You should check out the Windows VISTA Home page at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/