• June 20, 2006 •
Windows Vista Beta 2 Review
(Page 3: Windows Vista User Interface)
First Impressions
Windows Vista Beta 2 runs fairly smoothly on my systems. Granted, I have plenty of memory to throw at it. Please remember: better to spend a bit more money on memory and a little less on getting that current top-of-the-line CPU. More memory always wins over a few hundred Hz more in CPU speed.
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What you get (or are looking at in this review) is the Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, the "uber" edition of Vista. It includes everything that Microsoft will ship in any other edition of Windows Vista, be it business or consumer edition. |
On my laptop (which can't run the Aero GUI because it only has 32MB of graphics memory) Windows Vista uses 234MB of RAM (from 768 MB installed), and a 440MB page file. On my desktop PC, Windows Vista uses 532MB of RAM (from 1.5 GB installed), and a 617MB page file. The Windows folder takes up nearly 7GB of disk space. |
The only driver problem I had is that Microsoft doesn't have a driver for their fingerprint reader (I have a Microsoft Optical Desktop Keyboard with Fingerprint Reader), but most of my hardware is at most 4 years old.
Vista User Interface
The most obvious change with Vista is the user interface. As you have undoubtedly heard by now, Windows Vista introduces us to Aero, the new Windows user interface present in most versions of Windows Vista. According to Microsoft, Aero provides a user interface that can scale to the hardware capabilities of your computer.
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When Windows first loads, you'll also notice the new Windows sidebar. By default it will display a slide-show of pictures on your computer (a number of default pictures are included as usual), a 'classic' clock, and an (Internet Explorer) Feed Viewer (Figure). Items on the sidebar are called "Gadgets", and a few are already available on Microsoft's Gadgets Website You will also notice the new Start button & Start menu (Figure). The new Start menu increases the space on the left where Windows displays the most recently used applications so that it now uses about 2/3 of the width of the Start menu. This is a good improvement, because as seen in the previous beta, the All Programs items now display 'in place' inside this part of the Start menu (Figure). To reduce the width of the items listed on the right side of the Start menu, Microsoft removed the icons from the descriptions. When using the Aero Glass interface, the icons now appear at the top of the Start menu, sticking out over the top of the menu (Figure) (when using Aero Basic, the icon will just appear at the top inside the Start menu (Figure)). Changes have been made to the Windows Taskbar too; it now supports thumbnail previews (Figure). This can be helpful in determining the state of a program you have running in the background without having to bring the program into focus. In previous betas there was a new icon on the Quick Launch toolbar (which in Windows Vista is enabled by default, as opposed to Windows XP where it was not enabled by default) called "Window Switcher". Pressing the icon would show you a 3-D view of all open windows (applications/programs or other windows) on your system, and you'll be able to scroll through them using your mouse scroll button (Figure). In beta 2, the function is called Flip 3D, and Microsoft has removed the icon from the Quick Launch toolbar. Now you access Flip 3D by holding down the Winflag key on the keyboard in combination with the Tab key. You can repeatedly press the Tab key to flip through the open windows on your system. When you release the Winflag key, the window that's 'on top' of the 3D stack will be opened in focus. You can also use the scroll button on your mouse to flip through the stack. Yet another possibility is to press the Ctrl + Winflag + Tab keys. This way, Flip 3D will stay on screen without the need that you keep pressing a key. Pressing Esc or Enter to open the selected window (or clicking any window with your mouse) will close Flip 3D and open the selected window. |
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Microsoft also added thumbnail previews to the Alt+Tab combination, the more traditional way to scroll through open windows (Figure).
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