Word: vistas
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...Vista looks pretty. The edges of the windows are now transparent, like little glass microscope slides. Vista - blatantly following the trend set by Apple - represents data as translucent and jewel-like and faintly glowing. Subtle shadows, gleams and animations enhance the illusion. It's just cosmetic stuff, but given how much time one spends there, it's nice when one's desktop doesn't feel like a soul-leaching cubicle. (To assuage the Mac faithful: yes, many of Vista's features are pilfered directly from Mac OS X, and in general Apple has shown itself to be far more efficient...
...Vista makes sense, more or less. Much of the challenge of creating a good operating system is design, not technology. Which means figuring out a visually logical way for users to get at all their information easily. Vista is creeping in that direction, with improved search functions and nicely built-in music and photo organizers - you can actually "tag" photos with keywords, which is very handy. Useful widgets like clocks and photo albums cluster happily at the edge of the screen like attentive waiters, happy to serve...
...What truly makes a great user interface is an ineffable internal logic, a set of consistent internal rules that one absorbs without their having to be stated (like in a manual, for example), and I don't see that quite yet in Vista. You don't always instinctively know where the back button will be, or the "close this window" button. If your desktop is overcrowded with windows, you can hit an icon that will line them all up for you, tilted at an angle, so you can pluck out the one that you need. Nice - but at the same...
...Vista is secure, or at least it's securer. If that's a word. Being a near-monopoly makes Windows a magnet for phishers, viruses, adware and other malware writers. So Microsoft has worked on that, mostly under the hood. I think what most impressed me were the built-in parental controls: you can decide when your kids will use Vista, what websites they can go to, what applications they can run, whom they can IM with, and so on. And if they try to break the controls, Vista will rat them...
...Vista is expensive and a bit of a resource-hog. There are two versions targeted at home users : Basic ($199, which is about what OS X costs) and Premium ($239). (Note that Basic doesn't give you that nice pretty translucent look, which is Vista's most immediately appealing feature.) Most people won't buy Vista at retail, but you'll feel the burn somewhere in there whenever you buy your next computer. For the Premium edition Microsoft recommends a 1Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM, as well as a respectable graphics setup, but I think you'll need quite...