14 DAY TRIAL // A five-year gap separates Windows XP from Windows Vista. And yet, Microsoft only managed to bring to the table a superficial Wow, fueled by a modest set of innovations. And it shows, especially in the consumers? reactions to the operating system, and in the slow erosion of Vista's market performances in terms of sales. Microsoft shipped 20 million licenses in the first month, 40 million at the end of the first 100 days and only went to 60 million at the end of Vista?s half a year of availability. Currently, the operating system has a market share of approximately 6%, and will fail to pass the 10% or 100 million sold copies by the end of 2007.
In a resource made available by the Redmond company focused on the best practices associated with the everyday work with the operating system, the features that come into focus deliver little to no impact on the overall user experience. "Windows Vista brings a number of enhancements to the way that you do your everyday work. There are improved search capabilities, easier ways to sort and organize your files, and improvements to the interface that help you manage the many applications and information you work with each day," Microsoft touts.
Enhancements? Well, Microsoft actually chose to focus on: Search from the Start Menu, Switch Between Applications, Navigate Quickly Between Folders, Run an Advanced Search, Receive Updates from RSS Feeds, Display International Times and Tagging, Sorting, and Grouping Files. In translation: the default Windows Desktop Search mechanism, the old Alt + Tab combination, Windows Explorer, Search, RSS feeds in Internet Explorer 7, the Windows Sidebar and that's about it.
Now there is little doubt that the integration of the Windows Desktop Search mechanism in the Start Menu and all over the Windows Explorer shell via the Instant Search boxes is a great addition to the operating system. Less of an innovation because it has been done before, and the quickest reference that comes to mind is Apple's Mac OS X Tiger. But still, as far as functionality goes, the search features in Vista are a breath of fresh air, in contrast to the indexing service. And Google made the Microsoft change it in Vista SP1 dropping in the first quarter of 2008.
But other than that, Microsoft has very little to focus on. Flip3D is a nice piece of eye candy, but in terms of functionality, it scores pretty low. Windows Explorer was indeed enhanced, and the new navigation options do make getting around a whole lot easier, but then again, XP has got users hooked on alternative file managers, and it will be hard for Vista to convert them back. I'm not even going to address the RSS feeds integration in IE7, a feature so widely available before the release of the browser, that Microsoft has to be the last company to offer it. And as for the Sidebar... simply a great deal of wasted potential, because Microsoft supplied the platform and let the content up to third-party developers. And the gadgets for Windows Sidebar, with very few exceptions, are nothing more than endless repeats of clocks and performance measuring and monitoring items.