The Windows formerly known as Longhorn landed in the laps of developers today in a beta format. August 3rd was the date they announced last week when the named this beast Vista but Microsoft got so excited they couldn’t contain themselves and sent it out today.
Like a little boy waiting to give his mommy a birthday present, Microsoft sent out their program the software speculators rumored would hit the market today. Microsoft said yesterday it was just rumors but, as stated, their excitement overwhelmed them and they had to do it today.
To explain Microsoft’s excitement, one must consider what’s in the program. First comes a lot of man-hours as nearly half of the crew in Redmond worked in one form or another on this package. Many had been pulled away at one point to work on security vulnerabilities in XP.
Then comes all the good stuff in the guts of the software. Many of the tools integrated into this bundle of excitement have already been seen in one form or another now but the new and improved versions should be sweet. These include a new version of Internet Explorer with some new gizmos to stop “phly phisherman” from casting in your computer that their sites are good. This one will also be available for XP.
Something else to play with will be the search features including the search tool appearing above the Start button on your screen. It’s a nifty document searcher that can root around through your hard drive for stuff. This they already offer and they’ve marketed it to businesses quite a bit.
They’ve also slapped on new security features in the form of additional operating modes to make computer more resistant to hacking. Most home PC users keep their own PCs in administrative mode, which makes their system more susceptible.
There will be a ton of other features too but there’s still a lot of work in the program initially promised in 2005 when it was first announced. Another issue will be to resolve many of the problems that seem to traditionally plague Windows, whether it’s ’95, 2000 or XP. While Microsoft does improve the stability with each version, many have joked the version to hit stores is the beta and the corrected version isn’t done until the newer version is released. With vulnerabilities obviously a sticking point for Microsoft now, one can hope that these problems won’t be so prevalent.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
