The next version of Windows offers some productivity
improvements over XP, but its advanced graphics capabilities will
trigger a multimedia onslaught
With rumours going around that two-thirds of current PCs will
not be able to run Windows Vista’s Aero Glass windows, the
erroneous conclusion has been reached that Vista will be expensive
to implement and will give little back in return.
Aero Glass is a new take on the way Windows displays the various
screen boxes. It effectively makes windows look like a frosted
glass or clear plastic envelope around an application or comment
box so that you can see what is underneath.
Let’s get down to the technical requirements. To run Aero, a
graphics card must have a Longhorn Display Driver Model (LDDM). ATI
and Nvidia, the two biggest manufacturers of graphics cards,
already have Vista drivers for their current high-end graphics
cards.
To get the full Aero experience, these cards also need a lot of
on-board memory, ranging from a minimum 64Mbytes up to the
recommended 128Mbytes. From past experience, Microsoft’s
recommended specification is worth aiming for because 64Mbytes will
not run Aero very efficiently.
The card must also support the complete DirectX 9 application
programming interface (API). This API has been around since 2002
and reached its latest version, 9c, at the beginning of 2005, so it
will be applicable to most cards in use today.
DirectX was developed to allow Windows applications to access
advanced sound and graphics features. In the past, as Windows
versions grew older, multimedia technology advanced but Windows
applications could not take advantage of these new capabilities.
This was resolved by allowing direct access to sound and graphics
cards through DirectX.
Since 1995, Microsoft has worked closely with graphics and sound
card manufacturers to keep Windows up to date with the latest
developments. At the core of DirectX are its APIs, which form a
bridge to allow hardware and software to talk directly to each
other. That way, they can access the advanced features of
high-performance hardware such as 3D graphics acceleration chips
and the sound mixing capabilities and output of sound cards. Some
APIs control low-level functions, including 2D graphics
acceleration and shading as well as offering support for specialist
input devices such as joysticks, keyboards and mice.
Although DirectX was introduced to satisfy the needs of games
and multimedia applications, it has brought, and still brings,
benefits to the business community. Teleconferencing has been
democratised and is now available on the desktop rather than being
the preserve of specialist hardware in the boardroom. In everyday
use are the benefits of instant graphics displays from spreadsheet
data and faster navigation of web pages and desktop publishing
screens.
Adam Foat, a spokesman for Nvidia Northern Europe, suggests
users running Nvidia 6 or 7 series cards will still be able to use
them with Vista. “If you want to go back even further, older
systems will be restricted to those with the higher-end graphics
cards,” he says.
Desktop systems are easily upgraded but there may be more costs
involved with non-upgradable laptops. Burton Group analyst Chris
Howard says, “This is the big question. In many companies, people
are assigned laptops because they travel a lot and need the
mobility. Traditionally, they are not power users who require
advanced graphics capabilities. They want connectivity and access
to resources first, cosmetics second. The exception would be
laptops for people who have to give compelling presentations – for
example, sales and pre-sales engineers, where advanced graphics
play into perceptions of brand and capability.”
Companies like Nvidia and Intel are offering stable-build
specifications, ensuring that machines will run Vista reliably.
“This crosses over into our Nvidia business platform programme,”
says Foat. “We are helping OEMs by certifying systems based on the
AMD 64 processor and Nvidia graphics that is 100% stable. The
channel partners can then sell these to corporates and guarantee
stability. Once that system is certified it will be available for
one year and we will support it for two years after that.”
The fact is that Vista will run in one form or another on almost
every PC out there, if only with the same interface that already
exists in Windows XP. The graphics are a distraction that can be
ignored. Gartner vice-president Brian Gammage says, “Most
organisations should regard the visual enhancements of Windows
Vista as nice to have but not essential. Only users who need a rich
graphics experience for their work – content creators, graphics
professionals and engineers – will see a business benefit from the
visual aspects of Aero. An enterprise looking to buy new PCs for
general business applications will find no business justification
in spending extra on Aero-capable video hardware.”
Microsoft said PCs with appropriately configured graphics
hardware support for Windows Aero would offer a user experience
that would improve the look and feel of the Windows graphical user
interface. Among the benefits are glitch-free window redrawing and
improved productivity thanks to real-time thumbnail previews, 3-D
task switching, and the ability to increase or decrease the Windows
screen resolution to take advantage of larger high-definition
displays.
Aero relies on a new type of Windows graphics card device driver
software called Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) which Microsoft
said improves the stability of graphics and boosts the performance
of Windows when more than one application is being run on a Vista
PC. It also allows end users to swap monitors by hot-plugging,
without requiring the PC to be rebooted.
A lot depends on the software support for Vista. Because the
graphics are there, developers will find new uses and these may
ulitmately prove advantageous for businesses. These media-rich
applications will take time to appear and establish themselves and
it is likely that they will be niche products initially and will be
able to be catered for in the normal PC refresh cycles.
“User experience studies suggest ways that advanced graphics and
adaptive interfaces enhance functionality,” says Howard. “For some
users, the ability to create 3D representations of data and view
that projection from different perspectives will lead to better
analysis of patterns and trends. This is not the occasional user
but rather the domain expert charged with data analysis. Another
example would be the rejuvenation of teleconferencing technology,
based on the extended graphics capability of Vista. These meetings
would feature a mix of live interaction and recorded assets,
probably with real-time annotation facilitated by the
technology.”
If anything can be criticised in Vista’s graphics capabilities
it is the flip features of the product. Vista provides flip and 3D
flip to allow users to switch between applications running
concurrently.
Flip allows you to cycle through open application windows in a
similar way to using the current Alt-Tab combination in Windows XP.
The difference is that instead of a text title of each window being
given, Vista displays a live thumbnail of each window. This, argues
Microsoft, makes it easier to identify quickly the window you want,
especially when multiple windows of the same application are
available.
Flip 3D serves a similar purpose but is more graphical. The
screen display shows a 3D stack of open windows and the scroll
wheel on a mouse allows you to flip through the windows to locate
the application you want.
Even so, 3D flipping comes in the interesting rather than
revolutionary category and the productivity benefits are still
minimal when compared with Windows XP.
Although Microsoft would like us to believe that Vista will
change the way we do business, it will not do so overnight – if
ever.
What Vista will change is the future buying process. With this
release of Windows, graphics capabilities make an entrance that is
more disruptive than the processor and memory capabilities of the
past.
Whenever a buying decision is made it will be with an eye to the
longevity of the system, especially when Vista’s successor is about
to make its entrance. At the moment the media-rich applications do
not exist because they are unsupported. But when Vista bites, these
products will appear and future operating system releases will be
accompanied by upgrades of these new products that will definitely
take advantage of higher graphics capabilities from day one.