X-bit labs

First Impressions about Windows Vista Hit the Web

by Anton Shilov

[ 08/03/2005 | 11:20 PM ]

The first closed beta Microsoft’s new operating system (OS) officially named Windows Vista has finally made it to certain developers, which may indicate that the OS has been shaped in terms of its main concept and feature-set. While the beta is not intended for journalists, a number of web-sites issued previews of the Windows Vista Beta 1, furthermore, Microsoft itself has also cleared a number of things up. As a result, we can draw preliminary opinion about the new OS.

“Microsoft made available on Tuesday two separate privacy notices, providing information about data that Microsoft intends to collect during the beta testing process. Those documents also include information on some of the features, including many security-specific ones, set to be included in Vista and IE 7.0,” Microsoft Watch web-site wrote.

As expected, Microsoft Windows Vista will tackle a number of security related issues as well as introduce a number of capabilities that will improve overall user experience with personal computers. So far the following things are confirmed to be implemented:

• A new Speech Recognizer tool with increased accuracy thanks to a mechanism that learns speech manners of a user;
• Driver Protection feature prevents the operating system from loading drivers known to cause stability problems.
• Network Location Awareness Service collects network information, including DNS suffix of your computer, bandwidth availability and intranet connectivity, and makes this information available to applications that may require this data.
• Games Explorer lists all the games stored on a computer and keeps track of the last time each game was played, allowing users to sort or filter the display of games.
• Peer Name Resolution Service allows users to collaborate on the fly with others in the Internet or in the local network.
• Phishing Filter, which is a part of Internet Explorer, allows users to avoid web-sites that contain or distribute malicious software. The filter will use Microsoft’s database to sort the web-sites.
• Virtual Folders allow to compose certain related files into one or many folders, which should improve

Bit-tech.net web-site has managed to obtain a copy of Windows Vista Beta 1 and publish a rather detail preview of the operating system. The web-site said that at this point the OS is not that stable, but was rather enthusiastic about the product in general.

“At this stage, Beta 1 looks very interesting, but it really is the 'concept car' of releases and there's a lot more work to do before we can start really getting our teeth into this… It's unstable, buggy and many of the features which will make it interesting have not been finalised, let alone implemented in this release,” the web-site reported.

• Bit-tech.net: Windows Vista – First Impressions.
• Microsoft Watch: Microsoft Reveals More Vista, IE 7.0 Beta 1 Features.