No, I am not talking about World of Warcraft, the outrageously popular online role playing game that has over eight million subscribers. Rather I am talking about the catch-cry of Microsoft’s new operating system (OS), Windows Vista.

Every advertisement we see about Windows Vista has the word WOW in there. But what does Windows Vista actually have to produce this reaction? Should I get Vista? When should I upgrade to Vista? These are just some of the questions that need to be considered when looking at Microsoft’s latest offering.

“Windows Aero is the best-designed, highest-performing Microsoft user interface ever”. This is what Microsoft sees as the main ‘wow’ factor in its new OS. The translucent glass frames and the Flip 3D window cycling are navigational standouts compared to previous versions of Windows. However, it seems that Microsoft is taking a lot of its look and feel from the Mac OS rather than being truly ground breaking. Overall, The eye candy that Vista does produce in its new theme does give it that wow factor they claim in their advertising. But this is not hte only WOW factor for Vista.

But if you want the new OS with all the bells and whistles, then you are going to need a serious PC/Laptop and the high end hardware to run it. Vista comes in six different flavours catering for cost and supported features. ‘Starter’ is sold to underdeveloped countries and pre-installed on machines. Home Basic, and Home Premium are for the consumer market. Business and Enterprise are for the small-to-medium and high volume companies respectively. Ultimate is for the top end market with all features fully supported.

One interesting thing to note is that if you wish to install the 64-bit version with anything but the Ultimate version, wou will need to contact Microsoft to send you the 64-bit DVD version as all editions come with 32-bit DVDs, but only the Ultimate edition comes with the 64-bit DVD packaged alongside the 32-bit DVD.

Windows Defender, Firewall, Internet Explorer 7, Instant Search are all standard inclusions for all editions of Vista. The Aero desktop mentioned above is not available with the Basic edition and thus loses its’ WOW factor already.

A great feature for business is the Windows meeting space (available in Premium, Business and Ultimate). This allows Vista users to collaborate on projects virtually any where and at any time with out the need for projectors, meeting rooms or the like. As the feature suggests, Vista users can set up a meeting to work together on a project in real time without the need of swapping files via email or USB keys. Up to nine participants can be part of the meeting space from all over the world.

Another key feature for SMBs or those on the road is the introduction of the BitLocker Drive Encryption. This feature, only found in the Ultimate and Enterprise editions, addresses the threat of data getting into the wrong hands when hardware is stolen. BitLocker essentially blocks a thief from ever being able to read the data on a stolen Vista drive by using drive encryption and integrity checks of boot components. Even when the hard drive is used in another system, the data cannot be read as the integrity checks ensure the hardware has not been tampered with, and only then when the checks clear will it decrypt the data. BitLocker utilises a microchip (Trusted Platform Module) built into the system; it is this piece of hardware that is checked when booting up to see if there has been any tampering to the system.

Most of the new features in Vista, that come standard with the Ultimate edition and mostly included in the Home Premium edition, revolve around the PC being the entertainment centre of your home. From games and interacting with the Xbox 360 to making DVDs and high definition movies, viewing of photos and other entertainment via media center extenders. So from a business perspective, all the entertainment functions aside, how important is BitLocker to your organisation, a few extra dollars spent on the Enterprise or Ultimate edition could be a small insurance fee in the long run.

As with any new OS, there is always teething problems. None moreso apparent in Vista that the numerous conflicts in existing software and hardware. You can test to see if your system will be able to run the version you are after by installing and running the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=65926&clcid=0×409). This will give you certain advice about upgrading and make recommendations about your hardware, software and which version to upgrade to. For example, I will provide the recommedations for a PC and a Laptop, both are running Windows XP Pro with the latest patches etc.

PC
CPU: Pentium 4 3.4GHz (2 CPUs)
RAM: 2048MB DDR2
Graphics: Radeon X800XT 256MB
HDD: 2 x 120GB, 2 x 200GB SATA Drives
Motherboard: ASUS P5

The advisor will always complain about disk space on the hard drives.
The rest of the hardware seems all ok.

Laptop
CPU: Intel T2600 2.16GHz (2 CPUs)
RAM: 2048MB DDR2
Graphics: nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GS 256MB
HDD: 80GB SATA
Laptop: Dell Inspiron 9400

On both systems, the Advisor recommended Vista Business edition. But they could still both run the Ultimate edition if you wanted all the home entertainment extras Ultimate has bundled with it as well as BitLocker.

However, the advisor did have major concern about a number of programs used in the enterprise such as McAfee VirusScan and the Toshiba Bluetooth stack which must be uninstalled before upgrading to Vista

All in all, Vista does have a wow factor when you first look at it. But once you gets past the beautiful facade, it is just another operating system that runs your everyday applications, as long as they are Windows certified, as you would expect. Third party drivers for certain hardware (such as Creative’s sound cards) are not supported by Vista natively and so can cause some consternation when trying to get your system all up and running as you expect it would. Software applications may also run into trouble as seen with McAfee VirusScan. So in the interim, Windows XP Pro suits our needs fine. Once the first service pack for Vista is released I would then revisit my review of the OS and give it some further thought.