Vista may just mark an OS revolution

I'm obstinate. It's a character flaw. But it's deeply ingrained, so when everyone started pumping out Vista Beta 2 reviews I was determined to hold my head up high and not bother. Until someone in command pointedly asked me why I'd ignore something like that if the column's purpose was Windows in the enterprise.

Fine, damn it. Because we had some downtime before the upcoming 10-gig switch test at the ANCL Lab in Honolulu, I decided to use it -- and Contributing Editor Brian Chee's infrastructure -- to test my fresh Vista Beta 2 ISO. Except Brian told me to take a flying leap when I suggested approaching his humming Linux workstations with my fresh Microsoft meat.

So instead, I bundled up my hardware-heavy Acer Aspire 9500 notebook and shipped it to Honolulu to kill the XP and resurrect it as Vista. (Fortunately, I shipped it solo, as UPS sent the rest of my ANCL-bound boxes to Australia. Hugely competent.) When I got there, Brian had set up an out-of-service Opteron server with a new video card as another Vista-risking machine, so I got to do some basic testing on what Vista's real hardware requirements are. You can read up on that on the SMB IT blog.

As to my experiences with the new operating system itself, well here goes. First, you're blinded by Aero. This is Microsoft's new desktop user interface, and it's definitely slick: new 3D effects as part of the basic desktop scheme as well as a neat transparent effect that allows you to look through unused window panes to open windows beneath. It's very cool and obviously a we-need-to-be-cooler-than-OS X feature.

Things get even slicker when you flick the Win+Tab buttons. This turns windows on their sides to get a 3D scrolling effect across all open windows. Selecting among them is a simple mouse click away. This is especially cool when you're running a Flash video in a Web browser or an AVI in Windows Media Player and then flip it on its side -- the video keeps on running. Microsoft has also included desktop widgets a la Yahoo's Widgets (Microsoft calls them Gadgets), but so far these are mere toys and will undoubtedly annoy the average IT administrator enough to tempt many of them simply to turn the feature off.

More downside? As you'll see in the SMB IT blog post, a Schwarzenegger-esque flexing of the video card is pretty much a requirement simply to run Aero. Happily, if you're not into that, you can opt to turn the environment off in favor of more classic Windows desktop designs.