A whole new view with Vista

It may be hard to believe, but it is now more than five years since Windows XP was launched. Although numerous patches and updates have been released for the operating system, other areas of computing technology have moved on in that time.

Computing is now more dependent on the internet for downloads of tools, products and, of course, music and video. Windows Vista has been on the cards for some time now. It is finally complete and due to hit the shelves. But what will it really mean for you?

In many ways, Vista isn’t all that different from previous versions of Windows, so anyone who has used XP for any length of time should feel immediately at home. Delve beneath the surface and the differences between XP and Vista are significant. A range of new features and tools aim to make computing faster, easier and more fun, while other developments have been designed to make Windows not only more intuitive, but also more secure.

Much has been made of the fact that there are so many versions of Vista being released – a staggering eight editions in total – but some of these will only be available to large companies or in specific countries. In reality, there is a choice of three editions, which will offer different sets of tools as well as special effects.

For UK consumers, the choice will be between Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium, which can be compared with Windows XP Home Edition. More demanding users can choose Vista Ultimate, which is similar to Windows XP Professional Edition. To find out more about the various editions of Vista and their cost, take a look at the section 'Vista versions and prices’ on page 4 and look out for our comparative review of these versions in the reviews section of the next issue.

A new view
Take a look at Vista and you can’t help but notice the new design. Gone is the blue taskbar, replaced with a black one, and there is the option to use transparency effects if you have a suitably powerful graphics card. Gone also is the familiar Start button, replaced with a round button featuring the Windows logo. Click this button and the redesigned Start menu is revealed.

Efficiency is the name of the game here, and every effort has been made to reduce the size of the menu. What this means in practice is that sub-menus have been all but eliminated. Now when All Programs is clicked, there is no fly-out menu but the left-hand side of the Start menu changes to display the contents of the All Programs group. Similarly, clicking one of the sub-folders, such as Accessories, expands the contents of that folder in the same space.

To the right-hand side of the Start menu are links to frequently used locations such as Documents and Computer (the ‘My’ has been dropped), and rather than displaying an icon next to each of these items, a single icon at the top of this section changes in accordance with the option currently selected. While these changes are not dramatic departures from the familiar Start menu, they do take a little getting used to, but in time prove to be excellent enhancements.

Just as web searches have been integrated into web browsers, such as Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, so searching has been more tightly integrated into the Start menu. Just above the Start button is a search box. As you type into this, Vista scours your hard disk for files, program shortcuts and websites you have visited that match the term being typed in. The results are displayed within the Start menu itself.

More advanced searches can be performed by clicking the Search button in the Start menu, and from here it is possible to search for filenames, files containing text, files of a particular type (including emails), while applying filters to sort results according to the size of the files found and the last time they were changed. As you use the computer, Vista constantly updates its index of the hard disk to speed up searches.

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