Microsoft delivers glimpse of Vista

After four years of talking the talk, Microsoft last week gave the outside world its first official look at Longhorn, recently renamed Windows Vista, by shipping Beta 1.

The first release — which will go initially to 10,000 developers and users, eventually to 500,000 more — is packed with security and privacy features the company has been promising throughout the past year. The beta also focuses on improving reliability and on providing more flexible ways for larger IT shops to deploy and configure the product.

The beta also marks the debut of Internet Explorer 7.0, which features a new “protected mode” for greater security, as well as tabbed browsing, RSS support, and improved inline toolbar searching.

“Most of the end-user-focused elements — such as the [Aero] interface — you will see in Beta 2 next year. We are still on track to deliver [the finished product] in the second half of 2006,” said Neil Charney, director of product management at Microsoft.

Microsoft also introduced Network Access Protection, which guards against viruses and other malware. Another security enhancement, Windows Services Hardening, is designed to protect against viruses by monitoring all the services a desktop machine normally has access to from the time it boots up. To aid in this effort, Microsoft has bundled its AntiSpyware software package into the beta.

On first impression, some analysts think Microsoft has made an honest effort to address many of the security shortcomings that have plagued Windows in the past.

“All the security things [in Beta 1 are] good stuff. The [User Account Protection] is a really important feature that I think will be received well by users. And the quarantine technology, which they have been talking about for a while is also a good thing. You don’t want someone coming into the network that could potentially bring something harmful in with them,” said Al Gillen, research director for system software at IDC.

Microsoft’s Charney admits Windows Vista has a long way to go in terms of performance. To that end, the company has included in the beta Instant On, a new sleep-mode state that allows users to bring systems back up quickly, and it has improved memory management in an effort

to accelerate overall performance.

As part of this week’s briefing to reporters, Microsoft again showed off some of the visualization it plans to make available in the product.

With Vista so early in its testing phase, some analysts advise developers to proceed cautiously before hardening their plans.

“This should be used as a tool to help developers understand where Microsoft is going and for users to gain a sense of how they can leverage this technology in their environments,” IDC’s Gillen said. “There is still a lot of time for features to come in and go out at this point.”