By: William P. Flinn,
Updated
Friday, April 06, 2007 08:17 PM
(C) 2006 - Not authorized for reproduction or
sale without author's express written permission
Windows to Release New Operating System - Are You Ready?
In the very near future, Microsoft
will release their newest version of the Windows Operating
System. The release of Windows Vista is due to reach
the public around January of 2007. Of course, those of
you who know me know that I can't look at anything new in
the computer world without scrutinizing its security,
support, and maintainability aspects. So, I wanted to take
this opportunity to show you what Vista looks like, but also
give you an idea of some of the enhanced security and
maintenance features as well. This newest release of
Windows represents the most radical change in the look and
feel of Windows since the jump from Windows 3.x to Windows
95 over eleven years ago. From a security and stability aspect, this new
version promises to be more robust. And for those of
you who only care about the "eye candy" features and have
grown bored with the way Windows XP looks, you too will have
some new vivid graphics and gadgets (literally) to keep you
happy.
A Word
About Hardware:
If you truly want to take
advantage of Windows Vista's new graphics and user interface
features, you are going to need a fairly hefty computer.
If you are buying a new computer, look for the "Windows
Vista Capable" logo on the front. You are going to
need a fast CPU (dual core would be nice), lots of RAM (1 GB
minimum), and lots of video RAM (128 MB minimum).
These minimums are mine, not necessarily Microsoft's, by the
way. The computer will run fine with Vista on a
typical machine these days (3GHz CPU, 512 MB Ram, etc), but
many of the graphics features will not work. The user
interface (UI) in Vista is code named "Aero," and if you
have the more robust system, you can take advantage of a
host of new features commonly referred to as "Aero Glass"
features. The interesting thing here is that Vista will
tailor its performance and feature sets to the hardware it
detects in your computer. Better have a DVD drive.
So far, I have only seen the ability to obtain installation
media on DVD - it is a fairly huge package. I am not
certain at this time if Microsoft plans on releasing the
installation media on CD as well as DVD. DVD drives
are cheap - you will need one anyway.
For my tests and the screen shots
you will see below, I am running Windows Vista Ultimate
Release Candidate 1 (RC1) on a 2.93 GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 1GB of
RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500 video card with 256 MB of
video memory. Windows Vista RC1 runs fairly well on
this test box. So far it has proven to be very fast
and stable, with no lockups, freezes, blue screens, or any
other notable problems. The final release version may have
slightly different features and screen appearances than
those seen below. RC1 is drastically more stable than
Beta 2 was, and has a slightly different look and feel than
Beta 2. If this is any indication of the build
progressions, then there will be
some slight enhancements and bug fixes in the final release
versions, but will be fairly close to what is seen in the
RC1 build.
The Vista
Upgrade Path:
Vista will be available in several
different versions (six versions to be exact) for home and for
business. There will be a version that has more
multimedia features, and versions that have more business
and networking features. Windows Vista Ultimate (the
version I will show you here) will have it all. If you
are running an older version of Windows, you are out of luck
- there will not be an upgrade path for you - you will have
to install from scratch. If you are still running one
of these older operating systems, you probably need a new
computer anyway. You will need to be running Windows XP
Home or Professional to be able to perform a
direct upgrade, all others will require a clean install.
Note: If you are already running Vista Beta 2 or RC1,
you may have to do a clean install. In my testing, I
was not able to upgrade from Beta 2 to RC1 without failure.
Clean installs will always give a better, more stable
installation anyway.
You may want to wait a bit before
rushing right out and buying/installing the upgrade, however.
Make sure all of your applications will work properly with
Vista. Your antivirus software may or may not work
with Vista. Remember - Vista is a drastically
different operating system - so viruses that affect previous
versions of Windows do not affect Vista. For that very
reason, many antivirus applications would not even install
on my test box because they would not run on Vista.
One great feature is that your Windows Security Center will
tell you if you are missing an antivirus application, and
will give you a web link to antivirus applications. In my tests,
I found a great deal of difficulty just finding an antivirus
program that would install - but as I mentioned above, Vista
will take you to the site of a compatible application.
If you use other types of
maintenance programs, such as Diskkeeper for defragmenting
your drives, those programs probably won't work either.
For other types of productivity software, if they don't work
properly, you can run the software compatibility wizard to
try to fix the problem. The software compatibility
wizard will allow you to select the program that is having
problems, and have you run through a series of questions to
configure it to work under a compatibility mode similar to
your old operating system. This may solve some
problems and allow your older software to operate under
Windows Vista. An
article from Microsoft will give you a pretty good
step-by-step process and list of issues to consider when
upgrading to Vista. According to one
eWeek article, the best way to go is to not do an
upgrade but back up all your stuff and do a clean
installation. Application compatibility is a more
complex issue with Vista, but Vista offers compatibility
wizards to help you make an assessment.
Logging In
and Looking Around:
So let's take a look! The
most notable things you will notice right away about Vista
are the differences in the way the welcome screen, desktop
and the program menus look. The Alt-Tab function that
many people have
grown accustomed to and use quite a bit, used to give a fairly plain and vague
way to flip through and select an open program from a list of several.
The new Alt-Tab function and the new "Flip 3D" function
both
give a real-time view of what the open application is doing,
which makes it easier to select the application you are
looking for.
Here are some new things you will notice:
-
The welcome screen user icons
are horizontal instead of vertical
-
The desktop icons can be
resized on a graduating scale
-
The "Side Bar" and its various
gadgets that can be added
-
The much enhanced Alt-Tab to
flip through multiple open programs
-
A new "Flip 3d" feature that
lets you flip through open programs to switch
applications
-
Window pane transparency (if
you have a higher end graphics card)
-
The program menu does not
expand out of control - it stays neatly on the side
-
More Control Panel utilities
-
More vivid colors
-
My Documents is now kept
inside of a "Users" folder structure instead of
"Documents and Settings" folder hierarchy
-
Internet Explorer 7 Web
Browser with tabbed browsing and "Quick Tabs"
-
Windows Explorer renders
folders in a "3-D" view and folders/icons can be
variably resized
Maintenance and Diagnostics:
Vista includes a new memory
diagnostics tool, which reboots the computer and performs a
memory diagnostics routine completely independent of the
Windows operating system. Also included is a
performance scoring utility that tells you how your computer
scores, and specifically what you can do to improve your
computer's score. Network troubleshooting is a bit
easier as well. You are presented with a graphical
view of how your network is set up, with information about
the connection between your computer and any routers you
have, and between the router and the Internet. A
troubleshooting wizard is available to help you find out
what is wrong.
Finding out running processes and
programs can still be done with Task Manager by hitting
Ctrl-Alt_Del. You can also find running software and
processes using Windows Defender. Part of the task of
monitoring running software and listing startup programs is
now part of the duties that Windows Defender, the
anti-malware tool will perform. Using both together
can help you troubleshoot which programs are taking up
excessive resources, as well as help you determine if any
malicious or hidden processes are running that shouldn't be.
And finally, the old favorite "Perfmon" now gives the usual
metrics about various hardware performance issues as well as
the ability to track stability issues. It does this by
listing stability levels by date, calling out informational
and error events for various failures - hardware,
applications, Windows, and miscellaneous.
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Scheduling Memory
Diagnostics |
Memory
Diagnostics
After Reboot |
Troubleshooting
Wizard |
Windows Vista
Performance Score |
Windows Vista
Network Center |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Windows Defender
Software Explorer |
Windows
Defragmenter
Allows Scheduling |
Reliability
Monitoring
Tracks by Date |
Performance
Monitoring
New Perfmon Items |
Reliability
Monitoring
Info and Errors |
Click on the images
to see full size
One of the main maintenance features
of Vista that many people will like is that the disk
defragmenter can now be easily scheduled.
Previously, defragmenter could be scheduled, but you had
to know how to set up scheduled tasks, and it was a
separate and somewhat cumbersome process. Now,
disk defragmenter can be schedule easily right from the
disk drive properties/tools screen. The only
drawback of the new defragmenter is for you visual folks
who like to see all the "neat-o" progress graphics and
colored bars - where previously you would get a nice
graphic representation of defrag progress, now you only
get a numerical progress indicator. But who cares
- just set it to run overnight and forget it. No
more need to buy a third party defragmenter to do the
tasking of setting schedules.
A Word About Third Party
Maintenance Software:
All you DiskKeeper fans out there - enjoy it while you
have it on your XP boxes, because your present version
will not work with Vista. And along those lines,
your present versions of Partition Magic and Partition
Commander will have problems and will report that your
primary drive has errors - don't fix it with Partition
Magic, or you can say goodbye to your present
installation of Vista - and will have to rebuild.
Even if you are trying to use Partition Magic to perform
maintenance on a secondary drive, you will have a bit of
bad luck with it. I had to use Slate to wipe out a
second hard drive so I could use it as a secondary drive
in my Vista test box. Ghost had issues as well.
I tried to image one Vista drive to another hard drive,
and it worked somewhat, but upon installation of the
newly imaged hard drive as the primary drive I had to
boot to the Vista installation DVD and do a repair
before it would work. It never quite worked right
after that until I reinstalled the original hard drive
back into the system. Check the software
compatibility wizard and other information about
compatibility at the Vista site.
Key
Security Features:
The key security feature that
appeals to many security professionals is the ease of
enforcing the performance of tasks as an
administrative user. Previous versions of Windows
required either logging out and then logging back in as an
administrative user, doing a "Run As" to run as an
administrative user, or worst of all (and unfortunately most
common) just logging in as someone who always has
administrative privileges. With Windows Vista, if you are
logged in as a limited user (which you should always do) and
need to do something requiring administrative credentials,
you are simply presented with a password box to enter an
administrator password. This is how it has been in
Linux for as far back as I can remember - Windows is just
now catching up. In Vista, even if you are logged in
as an administrator, you are still presented with a prompt
to remind you that you are doing something using
administrative credentials.
Windows Firewall settings can now
be set using inbound AND
outbound rules. This is important because in the event
a malicious process does get installed on your computer, you
can now catch it when it is trying to "phone home."
Many malicious processes act by collecting information on
your computer and then sending the information out to a
malicious site on the Internet. Other firewalls,
such as ZoneAlarm, have done this for quite some time -
again, Windows is finally catching up. You can also
create custom rules and monitor enforcement of those rules.
Previously, Windows would block (inbound only) access
attempts and tell you nothing of the event. Rules can
even be made to prevent denial of service (DoS) attacks.
And of course, Windows
Vista will come standard with final release versions of
Internet Explorer 7 and the much anticipated anti-malware
program, Windows Defender. Internet Explorer 7
(finally) gives
IE users tabbed browsing, but also anti-phishing and better
pop-up blocking functionality - something FireFox has done
for quite awhile. Additionally, IE7 and
Vista combine with browser protection mode features which
limit the user's privileges to be greatly limited while browsing so that malicious
processes cannot exploit vulnerabilities with administrative
privileges. As mentioned above, Windows defender also
uses the Software Explorer utility to give you a picture of
running and startup software. Windows defender has been in beta for
quite awhile, and has proven to be a very robust
anti-malware utility. The final release version
included in Windows Vista is sure to be a superior anti-malware
product. Windows Defender signatures will be updated
via Windows Updates along with other Windows security
updates.
Setting
Parental Controls:
The parental controls features of
Windows Vista will allow parents to more tightly control
what and when their children use the Internet. Parents
can set hours for computer use, set sites as off-limits or
even limit browsing to only a few sites,
and even monitor what sites their children are viewing.
Easy to confuse this with censorship, but we are talking
about children, after all. It is (in my humble
opinion) the parent's job to
keep children from things that will hurt them or bring liability for illegal activities onto the parents.
This allows for a more granular setting of computer
restrictions. The other thing I personally like about
it is that the parental controls block what you specify, but
give a reason why - letting the kids know that you are
taking an active interest in their computer activities.
A Final
Word:
If you want to upgrade to Windows
Vista, make sure you have a fairly powerful computer, and go
out and do some research so that you know all of the
requirements and pit falls. Once you are satisfied
that you want to make the leap to the new O.S., go out and buy yourself a
good video card and a wide-screen monitor. Vista
takes good advantage of the new wide-screen monitor formats.
Quite honestly, you will be fairly disappointed if you try
to look at Vista on your old 15" CRT or even one of the
smaller LCD monitors. I tried it initially on a 1024 x 768
resolution monitor, and was left wanting for more. You will needs lots of RAM and a
hefty video card to be able to use all of the aero glass
features. If you are buying a new computer anyway,
research a 64-bit machine and make the leap to one of the
Windows Vista 64-bit editions. As Vista is making its
appearance, so are the powerful 64-bit machines. I
think we will be finding that future applications will cater
to the 64-bit systems and operating systems.
Click on the
images to see full size
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