Tom's Hardware Looks at Microsoft Vista Beta

RockClimbingFool writes "Tom's Hardware has a pretty good overview of what the current beta version of Microsoft Windows Vista has to offer. The article is written from an average user's perspective, specifically highlighting exactly which differences the average computer user can expect to see from Windows XP to Windows Vista. It covers everything from IE7, to the new Windows Aero interface, to brand new games." But if you'd like your eye candy open source and downloadable now, check out Lunapark6's review of the current version of Ubuntu Dapper, with "emphasis placed on helping someone set up the system for everyday desktop usage."

Comments

1 page version

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/print.html

Re:Can we leave the politics out of it?

[RockClimbingFool]

Yeah, my submission was only the italizied part. That other garbage is just submission crapping.

Re:If this is the best... keep trying.

[mad.frog]

So your mom would have an easier time installing windows?

Well, yes, most likely.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm not up to "read" 40 pages of screenshots, what, besides gfx of the UI (which has been already backported to XP as "skins") has changed in Windows?

A rather extensive list can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista. Some notable features include:
-New network stack
-New audio stack
-New driver framework
-New printing architecture
-New windowing system (DWM)

There are a substantial number of 'behind the scenes' changes in Vista. But for some reason the Slashdot crowd seems to think that the UI is the only thing that's changed. Oh well.

Re:Not Necessary but Useful

[Chosen Reject]

I've never installed Linux for desktop use that I didn't have to spend quite a bit of time making all the hardware work right.

Funny, I re-installed XP only 6 months ago and had to spend hours just getting the OS up and running with updates and drivers and such. Then another several hours putting on applications such as Visual Studio, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc, and I'm not including games. Just over the weekend I installed Fedora Core 5 and after an install that took less time than Windows I spent about 1 hour running the updates and had myself a usable workstation, with Anjuta, OpenOffice, Firefox (with plugins), etc. And no, this isn't new hardware. All my hardware was purchased before Windows XP was released, so the age of the OSs shouldn't be a problem when it comes to drivers.

But maybe you were counting customizing the look and feel. Because most distros don't come with Nerzhul as the destop wallpaper I had to do that, whereas for windows it's just the blank blue for me. So yeah, you have to spend a little time customizing Linux, but at least you can do it, whereas for Windows you get what they decide looks nice to the eyes.

In case anyone is wondering, Nerzhul goes on Linux because I can make everything blend in better with a dark wallpaper, whereas the simple blue on Windows blends in better with the blue-ish theme in XP.