Every Flavour Beans

Not being in the habit of playing a lot with the Windows beta products, I have been giving a miss to the different, incomplete versions of Windows Vista that were being released regularly(for MSDN subscribers and the members of Vista Beta Program). My experience with testing a very early version of Longhorn weren’t very enjoyable either. But yesterday I decided to give the public release of the Beta 2 of Windows Vista operating system a go - and I am not regretting the decision at all!

We have been reading the major technical differences between ’soon to be released’ Windows Vista and the earlier Windows operating systems for some time now. Many of the interesting new features though have been removed from Windows Vista in an attempt to release it as early as possible. But I won’t be discussing the real meat behind the new Vista operating system in this post; rather, I would just concentrate on showing what an eye candy of an interface Windows Vista is, even in a Beta 2 form, and it should only be improving from here. This doesn’t need too much of talking though, just a handful of screenshots would do the trick :) . If you have already installed Windows Vista then this post is not for you. If you have not, browse through the screenshots to decide if it is worth to test out this beta or not. And once it is released, whether to consider buying it or not.

Windows Vista - A Visual Tour

This is how Windows Vista looks like when you first boot into it.

Let us start with my favourite application in Windows Vista: Windows Media Player 11. It looks gorgeous in the black theme to match the default theme of Windows Vista and provides many improvements over the earlier version of the Media Player. I loved the support it provides to the Media Players that use MTP protocol(like Creative MP3 players).

The main window now looks attractive with Album art nicely organised providing a good visual interface for the users to select their favourite albums to play.

If you try to minimize the player, you are offered to minimize it and keep playing the music in the taskbar. Nothing new really. This is how it looks in the toolbar. Cuter than before.

Burning audio cds is easier with a noob-friendly drag-n-drop right-pane.

Windows Vista detects my iPod as a USB device…

…though it prompts to open the files in the file browser giving a hint that the operating system does identify it as a storage device(iPods are just FAT formatted USB devices on Microsoft Windows)…

…but shows no music files/folders or plays anything. Just lets browsing the ‘Contact’, ‘Notes’ etc folders in it; for the rest, install and use iTunes :)

But the support for the Creative MP3 players is excellent. I am more than happy for it as I possess two Creative Media Players(Creative Zen Sleek which you can see in the screenshot below and the Creative Portable Media Center) that are MTP devices.

Windows Vista detects Creative Zen Sleek:

Windows Vista prompts to open the device in Windows Media Player:

Syncing the audio files between Windows Media Player and Creative Zen Sleek MP3 player is very straightforward. (Though it is deleting all the existing files from the player if I chose the option to “Shuffle” the songs. The name of the option did not properly reflect what it is going to do I thought. I lost 3 files before I could click cancel.)

The album art present on the player are shown in the Media Player’s main window. Even an image of Zen Sleek is displayed in the right-pane of the main window!

The next most impressive feature in Windows Vista look is the Sidebar and its Gadgets. Some cool Gadgets are available to be added to the Sidebar(using ‘+’ button at the top) and many more can be downloaded from the Internet once people start creating custom Gadgets.

Some Gadgets added to the Sidebar(Number Puzzle/Shuffle Game, Egg Timer, Sticky Notes(my favourite), CPU Meter):

Some more Gadgets added(Calculator, Jigsaw Puzzle, Recycle Bin):

Next thing in the line is the 3-dimensional view for cycling through the open windows. But before that, let us see how the traditional way of cycling through the open windows(using ALT-TAB repeatedly) has changed in Windows Vista. The following screenshot shows the windows that are currently open:

Now press ALT-TAB to see smaller views of all the open windows at the center of the screen. Huge improvement over the earlier version.

But the best way is to use the WIN-TAB key to cycle through the open windows in 3-dimensional view(WIN key is the key on the keyboard with the Windows logo printed on it):

Just as with ALT-TAB, hold the WIN key and keep pressing the TAB key to bring the next window to the front of the stack. If you can’t observe in the sceenshot, if a video is playing in the Media Player, it continues to play while you are cycling through the windows!

Few things that have changed from the earlier version in interesting ways are:

Paint application now saves the images in PNG format. I know you are shaking your head in disbelief at this but it is true.

But the Paint application keeps giving errors occassionally for no apparent reason.

Extensions of well known files are hidden even when they are being downloaded from the Internet(more like OS X). For example, .exe files are just called as ‘Applications’.

Whenever a ‘protected’ resource is being accessed you are warned about the required administrator access. You can also run applications explicitly in Administrator mode by selecting “Run As Administrator’ from the context menu.

You can now try to have a look at the previous versions of the folders. I could never see the previous versions successfully though - it always showed the same current view.

Internet Explorer offers to protect from the phishing attempts.

Read RSS feeds right inside the Sidebar Gadget. Remember the videocast of Don Box demonstrating the same more than two years back using the very unstable version of Longhorn? Where is the Blogging Sidebar Gadget by the way? Fine, it got integrated into Office 2007.

Parental Control!! First ‘Media Center’, now parental control. We know who Microsoft is targeting here.

All the installed games have ratings displayed against them(bottom-left of the window). Available game options are visible in the drop-down menu.

You can select whose ratings you trust the most.

If you are a parent whose kids are too fond of playing games, you can recieve the notifications at regular intervals.

If you see a game, among others, that resembles the game of Chess, then you are not mistaken at all. It was a pleasant surprise to see ‘Chess’ being included in default games that come with Windows Vista.

For the beginners, there is help on how to play the game. If only a few popup balloons could have taught the game of Chess.

The board can be rotated in all the 3 dimensions using the right mouse button.

One of the things that I cannot resist is looking at a chess board and not playing a couple of games with it - irrespective of what I might be working on at that time. I played two games in a row - and won both. Don’t ask me what level I played against, I don’t want to prevent you from wrongly guessing that I played against the advanced level.

For the beginners, the visual cues about where a piece can move, whom it can attack etc will be helpful. Seasoned players can turn this off.

I couldn’t find an option to save the played game in any popular notation. There some other interesting games included, especially for the children.

A prompt to update the help files from the Internet.

You can find what else is new in Windows Vista by accessing the Help page(from the Welcome Center).

Now on to some serious stuff. This is the Welcome Center which opens as the first thing with every reboot until you explicitly disable it.

My dearest friend ‘My Computer’ looks like this:

Impressive thing to note about it is that there is a threadcrumb to guide easy navigation between various folders just like it is in GNU/Linux desktops(GNOME for example).

‘Documents’ folder continues to have the same old organisation:

‘Music’ folder is pepped up slightly:

Normal folders look like this. The first thing I am going to do is change the current images for the icons of the folders.

Control Panel has many more options than before. This is the default view, just like it was in earlier versions.

Now switch to the more accessible Classic View. You can play ‘Spot The Difference’ game by comparing it with the older version if you wish.

Grrrrr….Windows Defender is coming, be alert! This claims to protect from Spyware etc. For anti-virus software, use a third party tool or wait for Microsoft’s own anti-virus software that will be sold separately.

Yawn. Double Yawn. Windows Ultimate Extras.

Photo Gallery is what looks the most impressive. If you hover the mouse over an image, it is expanded. Nothing new here, Windows is just a little slow to follow the others.

Movie Maker is mostly like the old one:

Windows DVD Maker.

Interesting incident. When I tried to install the software that allows me to connect to the ISP(and hence to the Internet) I was offered to install it in the ‘Compatibility’ mode(Just like XP does for 98/Me applications).

But after rebooting the machine, all I got was BSOD(its B for ‘Black’ for a change this time). I entered into Vista using ‘Last known Good Configuration’ option and uninstalled the ISP software.

I had to search for ‘Add/Remove Programs’ after getting into problems because of the incompatible software. Its accessible right from from ‘My Computer’ through a button on the toolbar! (Available in ‘Control Panel’ too).

You can set AutoPlay properties for various types of Media through this dialog box:

The Calendar looks cute! Am I gonna use it or what?

Not a huge fan of Media Center, so just posting a couple of its pictures. Among the other things that I missed out, Internet Explorer is one - I got the internet connection too late in the day. I also found the Network configuration to be very confusing to say the least. So no screenshots of it.

After looking at all the screenshots if you have forgot how the old Windows used to look, here is a reminder. Windows Vista using Classic Theme.

So what do you say, is the overall look of Windows Vista worth giving it a test drive? Or considering buying it when the final version releases?