Microsoft's decision to delay the full release of
Windows Vista should emphasise the importance of a cautious
approach to the new operating system. Many of its features will be
improvements on its predecessor, but users may not find them
compelling enough to justify the cost of upgrading.
As with Windows XP and Windows 2000, Windows Vista will offer
incremental, evolutionary improvements. Most of those that
directly benefit users are security-related. However, most of this
functionality is already available via third-party products.
Windows 2000 users should plan to begin migrating in early 2008.
Most Windows XP users should pursue a strategy of managed
diversity, bringing in Windows Vista on new machines beginning in
2008.
With the release of Vista expected in less than a year,
Microsoft's marketing machine is in motion. While many of Vista's
features will be improvements on XP, XP is a good operating system
that will be supported until at least October 2013. Microsoft's
biggest challenge is to provide enough benefits in Vista to make
users want the upgrade.
As PC hard drives have ballooned and e-mail traffic has
increased, it has become increasingly difficult for people to find
things. Search is slow in Windows XP, and files, e-mail and
calendar objects cannot be found with a single search.
Most people still organise documents much as they did under Dos
20 years ago - by folder, based on the application they were
created in. Because it owns the user interface, Microsoft has the
potential to do a more seamless job of integrating search into the
user navigation experience with Windows Vista.
But there are other ways to improve searching. Competent
third-party desktop search tools are already available for Outlook
and Windows that also support older versions of Windows. Outlook 12
will provide its own improved search and will run on XP.
Along with user interface changes come end-user training issues
about how to take advantage of the new search and organisation
capabilities.
For example, Microsoft is using metadata for indexing and
searching documents. Users will have to be educated about the use
of metadata, but the initial beta releases of Windows Vista do not
include mechanisms for the automated scrubbing of metadata as
information leaves the machine, raising issues about user
privacy.
Finally, Microsoft's search paradigm is primarily
desktop-centric, whereas the need to quickly locate information
spans all desktops and servers across an enterprise in a unified
way.
The ability to have users run with accounts that are less
empowered than "administrator" has been possible since Windows NT.
However, most Windows applications came from the Windows 9x world,
in which all users had full access to their machines.
Even today, Gartner estimates that 80% of Windows 2000 and XP
desktops are deployed with their users running with administrative
privileges for application compatibility.
In such circumstances, malicious code that the user encounters
has full access to the machine. User account protection modifies
the user's access token and uses heuristics to determine whether
the application requires administrative access, even if the user is
running as an administrator.
Vista will maintain application compatibility using techniques
such as virtual registry and file redirection for users running
with "standard user" privileges.
However, user account protection applies to interactive
processes only, and elevates the entire process for its life, not
just the period of time that administrative-level access is
needed.
Microsoft's redirection techniques are good, but they will not
ensure that every application will be compatible when run in a
lower privileged mode, so testing will still be required. The
long-term solution is to require application developers to ensure
that their applications do not require administrative access and to
have users run as standard users.
However, by the end of 2008 only half of enterprise Windows
applications will have made this transition and standard users
cannot install new software or browser helper objects, so many of
today's political obstacles to user lockdown will still apply.
While Windows has had a multi-language user interface edition
that companies have been buying or writing into their enterprise
agreements since Windows 2000, Windows has not been
language-agnostic (it still used English as its base, and not
everything was translated into local languages).
Vista will use a language-neutral binary base and will treat
English as a language pack. The image management tools included
with Vista will be powerful, enabling image consolidation through a
large degree of hardware neutrality and enabling the offline
patching of images.
While some users cannot centralise image creation and
maintenance because of organisational or cultural issues,
multi-language user interface has already allowed some
organisations to centralise images and reduce them by 90% with
Windows XP. Vista's enhancements will make multi-language user
interface acceptable for more organisations.
But be warned: fully exploiting multi-language user interface
may cost you more money. Specific language components may be
purchased individually, or unlimited language packs are available
at "no cost" with the Enterprise Edition, which will be available
only to subscribers to Software Assurance on the Windows
client.
Although Microsoft states that a single image could be used
across different hardware platforms, drivers will still need to be
managed, and it is unclear how disparate disc interfaces will be
supported.
Applications that make extensive registry and file system
changes and that are typically deployed using software distribution
packages (including Windows Installer) will not be able to be
installed to an offline image.
Neil Macdonald is an analyst and Michael Silver is research
vice-president at Gartner