Windows Vista: Beta 2 Preview

Conclusion

Ultimately, in order to truly be positively accepted, Vista needs to prove itself as a worthy replacement for XP, and worth the unprecedented release gap between itself and XP. At the same time, Vista is Microsoft's first complete chance to respond to Apple's advancements with Mac OS X; this is all the more important now that Apple has made the switch to x86 processors. What Microsoft does with Vista will likely be a large influence on how much more progress Apple makes into the traditional PC market over the next 5 years.

While this is still a beta operating system, and we'll certainly be taking another look at it when it's ready to ship, as a feature-complete OS we can still evaluate it at a basic level, and get an idea of where Vista will stand among the other OSes in the marketplace.

Vista vs. Tiger

Although Microsoft may not consider itself to be in direct competition with Apple, this is the match-up most people have been waiting for. Vista implements a good deal of abilities that are suspiciously similar to abilities Tiger has, so the score card is not nearly as lop-sided in Apple's favor when Vista is taken into account. However, many of these new abilities feel more like poor imitations of Tiger than good copies.

As we've mentioned before, Microsoft's answer to Exposé, Flip3D, is clearly inferior in what we assume is Microsoft's attempt to not be so blatant in their copying. By overlapping windows in a rolodex fashion, Flip3D destroys much of the purpose and usefulness of such an organizational technique in the first place. Similarly, out of the box, Vista's quick search abilities are similar to Tiger's, but lack the smaller nuances of Spotlight such as the grouping results by type, understanding metadata, or even putting the results in a separate box (quick search temporarily uses the current window to show results).

This isn't to say that everything about Vista that it shares in common with Tiger is necessarily inferior. Microsoft gets points for their refinement of Alt+Tab, which by showing the contents of the applications makes it much more useful than Tiger's Cmd+Tab system, and users who are prone to Alt+Tabbing on Tiger anyhow in spite of Exposé are clearly going to be impressed. Similarly, IE7+ finally vaults ahead of Safari, and while we're more apt to use Firefox than either of those browsers, users who end up using the built-in browser will find IE7+ the more effective of the two.

Security is an aspect that we're not sure where to put either operating system, as we know the current beta implementation of Vista's UAC will be different from the final version. As currently implemented, UAC surpasses Tiger's security features by giving more information about what application is requesting privilege escalation and can give the user a chance to prevent malware from getting away with system changes, but at the same time most enthusiasts and likely even many normal users will find it's too overprotective and overbearing. There's a point that exists for UAC where it's neither underpowered nor overbearing, and if Microsoft can reach that then they'll clearly have a tighter core security system than Tiger. Even if Microsoft can't get their UAC implementation correct, though, Apple would be wise to learn from it for better ways to communicate with the user. While we're on the topic of security, the new Vista firewall should not go unmentioned; it's time for a full featured firewall for Windows and Mac OS X alike, and only the former has it. Apple likes to talk about how they don't succumb to virus attacks, but avoiding problems in the lack of a threat is not the same as being fully secure.

However, even with the massive improvements Microsoft has shown with Vista, we still feel they aren't quite ready to beat Tiger in a fight. Tiger still offers a more refined experience that doesn't come with nearly as many quirks as Vista does (beta quirks or otherwise), and there's a great deal of functionality that Tiger has that isn't replicated by Vista at all, such as drag and drop application installation or a Unix shell. Ultimately switchers are going to find that Vista is similar to Tiger, but it's not enough to surpass Tiger and cause them to switch back.

And then there's Leopard...

Vista vs. XP

So Apple users aren't likely to be impressed, but for users of Windows XP the decision is more straightforward. With a Windows-to-Windows comparison, we need to take performance into account, and Vista is not quite ready to do that, so much of this will hinge on Microsoft getting the performance of Vista up to par (if not above XP) and bringing critical driver support up to a similar standard. If Vista does not end up being as fast as XP (or close to it) or lacks too many good drivers, there's no reason for enthusiasts to upgrade to Vista right away unless there's a specific feature you need. Normal, less experienced users should be on Vista, as the security features will clearly be worth the costs for the extra protection against malware.

Assuming the performance problems are eliminated, the choice becomes fairly clear. Feature for feature, Vista is superior to XP, and its only real costs are memory usage, hard drive usage, and price. Until we have the latter of those, it'll be hard to make a recommendation in this case, but if the price of an OEM copy of Vista Business Edition ends up near that of the current XP Professional (around $130), then anyone with a Vista capable system will want to upgrade. If Microsoft fixes the speed, fixes the drivers, and fixes the compatibility of Vista, they'll have a clear winner on their hands over XP.

If all else fails for Microsoft and people don't want to upgrade, certain groups of users (especially gamers) won't have a choice anyhow: DirectX 10 alone will force some people to get Vista.

Vista x64, the Black Sheep

While through most of this article we've talked about the x86 version of Vista, which is what we actually ended up installing for our day-to-day use, it's important that the x64 version gets a mention too. On paper, Vista x64 is superior both for security, theoretical performance, and possesses a greater level of being future-proof, but at the same time we're a bit leery towards it at the moment.

As we've mentioned in our preview articles on XP x64 Edition, 64-bit versions of Windows have a few quirks to them as a result of a lack of 16-bit compatibility compounded by the Windows on Windows 64 (WOW64) translation layer for running 32-bit applications. The net result of this is that Vista x64 inherits the quirks of XP x64 along with the new quirks brought about by Vista itself. We don't know where the blame lies, but we had significantly more issues with Vista x64 than x86, including it refusing to run at a resolution of 1024x768 without apparently turning off 3D acceleration, a BSOD, program incompatibilities, and an overall feeling of being slower to respond than Vista x86. All of this begs the question: who is going to want to run an operating system that's slower, less compatible, and more resource hungry than a nearly equal version without the bugs?

Vista x64 is the future of Windows for enthusiasts; the normal 2GB per application memory limit of 32-bit applications practically ensures that in a few years high-end workstation apps and games will start requiring a 64-bit OS. However, we're going to have to take a more in-depth look at it when Vista ships; from the viewpoint of beta 2, it still seems to be the inferior brother of Vista x86.