Test-driving the new Windows

99) by Greg Perry

99) by Chris Fehily

30. Do you plan to upgrade? Vista, Microsoft's next generation of Windows -- the love-it-or-hate-it operating system that comes preinstalled on millions of PCs and laptops every year -- will be released Jan.

30, appearing on both new computers and retailers' shelves. And, If you bought a new PC in the last couple of months, there may already be a Vista upgrade box with your name on it waiting to go into the mail.
Should you buy a new PC with Vista?

Should you upgrade your old operating system? Do you really want to crack open that box when it arrives in the mail and give Windows XP the boot?
My opinion: Don't hurry.

Vista is nifty. Vista is cool. It's prettier and has more new tweaks to usability and function than just about any version of Windows since we first laid eyes on Win95.

It adds new layers of security, both to the underlying OS and to your Internet experience. And it's darned stable, despite what some critics say. I'm writing this piece on Jan.

12, and the last time my computer was rebooted was Jan. 2 -- and that was only because I shut it down to go away for the New Year's weekend. But it's also got its critics and its quirks.

For starters, it doesn't "just work" with everything. Longtime readers will recall an experiment I did a year ago in which I managed to get Apple's OSX installed on this home-built PC. In just a couple more days of hacking and tweaking, I also managed to get every piece of hardware I owned to also work without flaw.

Not so with Vista, which I first installed a little over two months ago. Out of the box, its driver support was scant. It took several days to find drivers that would properly run the onboard sound card on my mainstream motherboard.

My Epson scanner was detected and drivers were installed, but the scan utility hung at every attempt to use it. And my fancy Konica-Minolta color laser printer was rendered into a large paperweight that would produce nothing more than pages and pages of text gibberish when I attempted to send it anything. Eventually I got an XP driver to work.

Mostly.
All any of those peripheral manufacturers did was shrug their shoulders and promise that drivers would be available after Vista's final release. Let's hope, and let's wait.

Unless your PC was recently purchased with a Vista upgrade promised, or unless it came with a "Vista Ready" sticker on the front (ensuring its hardware should have Vista support), I'd recommend you use the wait-and-see approach:

Vista is nifty. Vista is cool. It's prettier and has more new tweaks to usability and function than just about any version of Windows since we first laid eyes on Win95.

Vista also has its quirks. Here's a look.
Security.

Vista comes with built-in firewall protection, built-in basic spyware protection and Internet Explorer 7. While the new browser -- also available as an add-on to XP -- isn't perfect (which one is?), it does feature new anti-phishing and spyware features that keep you from making mistakes on the Web.

Critics may say it's not safe enough, but it's safer than what many now use to secure their machines: nothing. And it comes in the box.
New and improved Windows Explorer.

Oh, it takes some getting used to, but once you do The address bar provides a trail of where you are when exploring folders, and its pulldowns let you maneuver right there. But there also are handy -- and easily customizable -- "Favorite Links" in the left-hand navigation pane to take you to frequently-accessed folders quickly. The preview pane at the bottom actually works with almost everything you click on.

Sharing, mailing and burning files to CD or DVD can be managed with a bar of icons across the top.
Windows Sidebar. This nifty dock holds and displays small programs that keep the time, the weather, RSS feeds, the status of particular PC components, calendars, search bars and whatever else the geek community dreams up right on your desktop.

It's slick. It's handy. And you can fill it with bonus gadgets simply by right-clicking on the Sidebar, selecting "add gadgets" and going to the Windows Live site.

New and improved taskbar. When you've got a bunch of windows open in XP, it's never easy to tell which is which. In Vista, when you hover your mouse pointer over a hidden or minimized application's button, you get a small thumbnail view of what's actually in that application's window, whether it's a browser, a Word document, a picture, etc.

Flip-3D. It may change the way Windows users switch between applications forever. Pressing Alt-Tab lets you scroll between windows -- complete with thumbnails -- in a bar that pops up.

Hitting the Windows key and the tab key brings up larger representations in a 3D format that seems to hang in space above your desktop. (Hint: If you like this, watch for new keyboards expected to have dedicated Flip-3D buttons.)
The "Aero" interface.

The look and feel of Vista is a marked improvement over Windows XP's "Luna" -- the name for the design of the windows, its borders and menus. XP was often lamented as cartoonish and clunky. Aero, with its colors and translucent window borders, seems obviously influenced by the beauty of Apple's last operating system, OSX.

New and improved games. Solitaire is still solitaire, but nicer to look at. But there's now a very nice Mahjong tile game that comes with Windows, complete with almost photorealistic tiles and sound effects.

Easier networking. While there may be some driver headaches for end users, setting up a Windows network -- easy enough under XP -- is even easier with Vista. The Network and Sharing Center makes it easy to share files and folders without compromising your PC and with less geek-speak language than ever.

Media Center. Media center-capable versions of Vista offer enhanced handling of movies and television -- powerful enough to turn your PC into a DVR. However.

Hardware requirements. In addition to making sure your peripherals are supported, you'd better make sure your CPU has enough horsepower, your PC has enough memory, and your video card has enough processing power. If not, Vista will run poorly, not at all or only with some of the new features -- like the Aero Glass theme or Flip-3D -- disabled.

Go to and download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to see if your PC is up to snuff.
Broken games and critical software. This happens with almost any update to Windows, but seems more common in Vista than ever before.

If you've got a favorite game or spreadsheet or piece of Internet software you can't do without, make sure it's Vista compatible before doing anything else.
Product activation. No operating system to date has treated its customers more like criminals.

For starters, the End User License Agreement in Vista seems to imply that you're renting the operating system, not buying it. You'll have to activate Vista with Microsoft when you install it or when you fire up your PC. And you'll have to do it again, and again and again periodically to keep it running.

You can't easily move your copy from one PC to another when you buy a new one, and your whole installation could go belly up -- requiring you to purchase Vista again -- if you upgrade the parts in your machine so thoroughly or so frequently that Vista decides it actually is a new PC.
Digital Rights Management. Yet another feature that treats you like a lawbreaker.

Microsoft so thoroughly pays its respects to the audio-video-film industrial complex that many fear the simple act of sharing video clips and music may come to an end. Already, the video and audio drivers in Vista are designed to disable or degrade output on audio and video cards when used with some content in an effort to keep pirates from exploiting the so-called "analog hole" for copying content.
Peripheral support.

So far, it's lousy. Critics say it's because of the requirements Microsoft has placed on third-party hardware makers to meet certain certification requirements, including respect for so-called "protected" content. To the end user, it just means that a lot of printers, scanners, audio cards and other devices just won't work right away.

Security: Part 2. It sometimes gets in the way. Windows protects its operating system so well that it's now hard to do things such as change file extensions, extract programs to your Program Files directory or change preferences or settings without having to confirm to the operating system that you really want to do it.

And the flashing the screen does to switch to "administrator mode" is just plain disconcerting.
You can reach Tom Gromak at tgromak@det news.com.

Copyright 2007 The Detroit News. All rights reserved.