Windows Archive

El Reg has reveiwed Windows Vista. "So, there's our first look at Vista. It does benefit from a lot of good ideas, many of them Apple's, of course, but good nevertheless. It simply doesn't work very well, unfortunately. There are serious problems with execution; it's not polished; it's not ready. It should not be on the market, and certainly not for the outrageous prices being charged. Don't buy it, at least until after the first service pack is out. Don't pay to be a beta tester." Elsewhere, analysts believe Windows Vista will take a bite out of Mac's market share.

Forbes takes a look at Vista, and writes: "More than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump. The new slogan is: 'The Wow Starts Now', and Microsoft touts new features, many filched shamelessly from Apple's Macintosh. But as with every previous version, there's no wow here, not even in ironic quotes. Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out." They also look at Office 2007.

Microsoft touts Windows Vista as giving significant security improvements over Windows XP, and it offers the Windows Firewall, with its new two-way filtering feature, as one reason for that better security. But as shipped, the Windows Firewall offers little outbound protection, and it's not clear how outbound protection can be configured to protect against spyware, Trojans and bots.

Roughly two months after the initial launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft software development leader Ben Fathi said his company is pleased with the security, performance and feedback it has received regarding its newest operating system. Seated in a quiet briefing room removed from the pressing mass of humanity coursing through ongoing RSA Conference 2007, Fathi, corporate vice president of development of Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division, appears at ease, and even happy discussing the topic of Vista security. The Onion has its own take, while CNet also has some things to say.

"Windows XP introduced Visual Styles as a mechanism for providing more visual appeal to windows and controls. Menus, however, were not rendered using visual styles for Windows XP. With Windows Vista menus now are part of the visual schema and are rendered using the visual styles engine."

"Future versions of Windows are going to bear little resemblance to what we've heard so far officially - and unofficially - from Microsoft and the individuals who love to leak tidbits about the company. In fact, according to one of my reliable tipsters, the new and reorganized Windows organization, led by Senior Vice President Steven Sinofsky, is trying to wean folks completely off the Windows code names they have been using for the next couple of releases of Windows. Welcome to the brave new world of 'Windows 7' (a boringly named complement to 'Office 14', the successor to Office 2007)." More here.