Are You Ready For The Evolution?

Windows Vista has officially arrived, finally! But only for the corporate users. The company has announced the business availability of the Windows Vista operating system, the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Exchange Server 2007.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates had told shareholders on Tuesday that Windows Vista could be the company's biggest product launch since Windows 95 debuted more than a decade ago. Unlike the previous Windows launches, Vista's debut has been divided into two extravaganzas. While on November 30, Microsoft unveiled the corporate version of the new OS (along with Office 2007). The bigger rollout is scheduled for January 30 when Vista will be officially launched as a consumer product.

Microsoft has a big surprise up its sleeves for the consumers as Vista’s availability in five variants with aggressive pricing has no precedent in Microsoft’s product history. As Vista goes Corporate, here’s recapitulating all that is new with the operating system: interface, security, search, system requirements, and the various flavours.

Graphics
Desktop windows and icons are visually richer, an attempt by Microsoft to make computer use more intuitive and free-flowing. A desktop "sidebar" grabs data from the Internet to deliver customizable information at a glance.

Search
For those who find locating their things on a PC quite a task in Windows, here's help. Vista makes searching faster, more prominent and powerful, letting you hunt for desktop files and data in applications at once. A reactive ode to Google desktop search!

Security
Windows traditionally lets programmes running on the desktop access information stored all over the PC. Vista essentially seals off the core of the operating system, known as the kernel, theoretically reducing the damage a rogue programme can cause. It includes some basic anti-virus protections out of the box. It also lets corporate managers disable a PC's USB port, preventing workers from slipping data out on portable drives.

System resources

Vista can take advantage of portable flash drives to put frequently used applications in a sort of holding pattern there, making it much quicker to launch those programmes and putting less strain on the juice-sucking hard drive.

Interface
Office 2007 has done away with long-used menus in the Office programmes, regrouping them in a "ribbon" atop the screen that is designed to make it easier to find all the software's capabilities. Excel offers new ways of colour-coding data for at-a-glance presentations. E-mails and other items in Outlook can be tagged with an array of colours to better categorise and manage information.

Collaboration
Word makes it smoother to circulate documents to colleagues for review. Excel enables spreadsheets to be shared in a format that is interactive like the traditional Excel files but hides secret, often valuable formulas used to calculate data. Outlook adds new ways for incorporating scheduling and to-do lists in e-mail.

File format
Office documents will now be saved in the XML format, which will make it easier to search their contents and transfer them to other applications.

System requirements
To run Windows Vista Home Basic, the minimums are an 800 MHz or faster processor, 512 MB of memory, graphics hardware capable of SVGA (800 by 600) resolution, a 20GB hard disk with at least 15GB of free space, and a CD-ROM drive. For those who want Vista's Aero interface, they will require a graphics card that can handle DirectX 9 graphics APIs with Pixel Shader 2.0 3D texturing, has a Windows Vista display driver and at least 128 MB of graphics memory, and supports 32 bits per pixel. Users can also go for PC Pitstop's Vista readiness test, which will give them a brief comparison of their system's hardware to Vista's minimum and recommended system requirements. Microsoft's own Windows Vista upgrade advisor provides a thorough assessment. The programme scans the system and prepares a report analyzing its system's basic hardware compatibility (CPU, memory, and disk space), and details if the installed applications and drivers will work with Vista.

Flavours
Unlike Windows XP, which came in only two retail editions--Home and Professional, Windows Vista will come in five retail flavours. Microsoft has also released two OEM versions: Media Center Edition and Tablet PC Edition. For home users too, there's Home Basic and Home Premium.

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