If you are interested in Microsoft's new operating system called Vista, you can't find a much better review than the one found at Tom's Hardware. The folks over there take you on a 40 page journey that took over 500 hours of working with Vista to create the article. If you aren't of the mindset to read all 40 pages of the article, I will summarize it in as few words as possible. 
 
The review mentions a number of new features that are found in Vista. Based on the information found in this article, the short synopsis of this review can be summed up in one sentence: Vista doesn't have one new feature that isn't already present in either Mac OS X, or the Linux operating system. In fact, the concluding page states: 
 
"One notices repeatedly while working with this software that Microsoft scoped out its competition very carefully." 
 
There are a number of improvements in Vista, however, that will make the end-user pretty happy. Vista now sports an improved and streamlined archive decompression utility. Downloading an archive from the internet used to require an assistant to take you through the decompression process. Right-clicking on the file now gives you the ability to decompress the file without going through the lengthy assistant. 
 
The new operating system also installs almost all of the required device drivers automatically during the initial start-up of the operating system. This will be a welcome change for users who started up their computers for the first time and have had to click through innumerable dialogue boxes while XP installed device drivers. In the interest of parity, it should be mentioned that Macintosh computer users rarely (if ever) have to install device drivers. 
 
Vista also has a new User Account Control function to enhance a regular users ability to install software that might require administrative access, yet protects the operating system by leaving the user in a non-admin account. If a non-admin account needs to install something as admin, they simply use the "runas" command to "run" the software installer "as" an admin user. Here is the article's explanation of this: 
 
"The guiding idea behind this technique is called the "principle of least privilege". Under this doctrine, users who normally work on a Windows machine should log in using ordinary user accounts, so that if they contract a virus or other malware, that unwanted software is a lot less able to do serious damage than if they routinely log in using administrative privileges. But Microsoft hasn't taken this principle entirely to heart, either. The first user defined during installation is automatically granted administrative privileges. Worse yet, the reserved account named Administrator is not required to have a password to log into the machine!" ( http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vista/page18.html ) 
 
Basically it boils down to the widely accepted principle that a user should never run an operating system in a full administrative account if they want to have the best security possible. Conversely, Mac OS X already gives a non-admin user the ability to authenticate as admin for certain functions that might require it. On the Mac, this is done by clicking a single button and entering a username and password. We'll have to see whether or not this "runas" implementation is that simple. 
 
One problem pointed out in this article relates to security concerns in Active-X. The reviewer tried to remove the Active-X plugin from Internet Explorer 7 and was unable to do so. Active-X is well known for its security vulnerabilities that contribute to the proliferation of viruses, and spyware, and also the total takeover of the operating system. 
 
For more information on Active-X and its security problems, see:  
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-184A.html 
http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-293A.html 
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878 
 
The article ends by taking an incredibly long 8 pages to discuss the many games and game improvements included in Windows Vista. Nearly 1/5th of this entire article was devoted to the included games. Some of the new features are nice, but hardly worthy of devoting so much press to them. For instance, was it really so important to point out that you can now save games when quitting out of them? 
 
Windows also includes a new Chess game in it. What wasn't mentioned in this review is whether or not the version included with Windows Vista supports voice navigation and control out of the box like Apple's does (and has since 2000). Physically challenged individuals with special needs will no doubt find Apple's chess program vastly superior to Vista's. 
See: 
http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/ 
 
Here is a list of more new features found in Vista, and the year that each of these features was already introduced by either Mac OS X or Linux prior to Vista. 
 
User Interface Transparency- Linux 2003 or earlier, Mac OS X 2002 
Small Applications called Gadgets- Mac OS X (Widgets) 2004 
File system protected from Internet Explorer 7- All modern operating systems protect their file systems from web browser vulnerabilities. They have for many years. 
Tabbed Browsing- Firefox (formerly Phoenix) in Linux and Mac OS X have had tabbed browsing since 2002  
Integrated RSS Feeds- RSS feeds have been integrated into Firefox 2004(Linux and Mac OS X) and Safari (Mac OS X) since 2005 
Website Preview Function- Opera Web Browser in Linux and Mac OS X 1995 (formerly NeXT OS) 
Built-in Popup Blocker- All web browsers on all platforms supported popup blocking by 2002. Microsoft Internet Explorer did not until 2004. 
Automated Defragmentation- All Unix-based OSes (including Linux and Mac OS X) have had automated defragmentation, or smart file system management (negating the need for defragmentation) built into them for many years. 
 
While users will surely find most of the new features in Windows Vista appealing and useful, there is no denying the fact that almost all of these features have already existed (in some cases for 5 or more years) in Mac OS X and Linux. Some people might say that these features are worth the wait. For the sake of the end-users at our school and their day to day computing experience, I say that I would rather lead, than follow. 
 
CH