Windows Vista Beta Testing

I sent Microsoft 10 bucks and was sent a DVD of the latest version of its operating system, Microsoft Vista. So far, I really like the new look and feel. The windows are transparent in this version, and you can see what is layered on the desktop. The desktop also features some gadgets that can float on the desktop, such as a clock, a CPU monitor, quick notepad and more.

The new media player looks great! It organized my music by album, artist, and title. The album art is greatly improved over previous versions.

There are a couple of features that are going to get old pretty quickly, such as the system interrupts- This is a feature in which the operating system will stop and prompt for human intervention for any action that will alter the underlying baseline of the operating system. For instance, any program that communicates on the internet will prompt you to click okay to confirm. Any action dealing with the hardware or software wizards will do the same. As a security pro, I understand why- it prevents software and malware from self-installing or altering the system. This should help defeat botnet code and other trojans, including browser hijackers. But its annoying.

IE7 looks pretty good and operates much better in Vista than it does on XP, where I have been testing it out for a few weeks now. But make sure you keep a copy of Firefox around. I tried several times to download the Office 2007 beta from Microsoft using IE7, and the browser kept crashing and restarting. I have no idea why, and I reported it to Microsoft. I fired up Firefox, approved its usage on the Internet, and downloaded the software.