It Came From Redmond… (or: At the Gates of Windows Vista)

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Microsoft is set to release their latest and greatest OS, Windows Vista. I’m not about to go into the nuts and bolts of this heady and ambitious upgrade, but I’m feeling very optimistic that the ol’ M$ may have done some good this time around. With the highly publicized and participated alpha, beta and 2nd beta, the software giant took a cue from their Cupertino rivals and took their fucking time with their product, instead of rushing it out the door as per their usual operating mode.

There’s so much here to make note of it’s stupid, but I’m extremely excited about Vista’s “Superfetch” features, in which the OS will seek out alternate memory sources, such as USB drives, to use for pre-caching on the fly. While not exactly useful for the day to day, this feature could potentially give your rig a little breathing room as it’s pumping out frame after exhausting frame of DirectX 10 prettiness.

Another feature, which should be the de-facto standard at this point, is the interface. Yes, my Mac-Loving friends, Microsoft has completely and utterly aped your beloved OSX, but as they say, if it aint broke…

Seriously, though, this is a big step up for Windows and it’ll do alot to make the OS seem less… mechanical and daunting, even if it is just some shiny frames and transparent windows. The look and feel is a hell of alot more inviting than the Microsoft Blue theme that XP defaults to.

Since I’ve only had but a short time to tinker with Vista while it was in its beta form, I can’t speak for its current state, but even in beta, it was a hell of alot more solid than XP was after the first service pack. Word ’round the campfire is that after one of Bill Gates’ laptop computers crashed because of Vista, he brought down hell and initiated a line by line bug-hunt of the code, which, while halting the production a full six months, did much for the overall quality of Vista.

If you want more, check out Engadget, who is currently blowing out all the digs on Vista, including all the screenshot porn you can ask for.

Here’s to hoping Microsoft has been listening…