14 DAY TRIAL // Many described Windows Vista as Microsoft’s biggest flop, especially given the issues that early adopters experienced with overall performance, the new security features, and the support for drivers.
But despite the criticism, Windows Vista was considered one of Microsoft’s most beautiful operating systems, as it was considered a major evolution from Windows XP.
The new Aero effects, the glass theme, the color themes, and the new animations, coupled with features like desktop gadgets and customizable themes, all made Windows Vista an operating system that many loved, but which so many others refused to use because of all the issues.
Microsoft has put a lot of effort into getting Windows 10 right from a visual and usability perspective, not necessarily to make it a replacement for Windows Vista, but to provide users with a natural evolution from Windows 7 and 8.1. The Fluent Design language is specifically supposed to do this, and the effects that have already been implemented or are currently in the works are meant to help the experience overall feel more modern.
Windows Vista, however, was the OS that introduced Windows Aero, and people absolutely loved features like the translucency effects, which users referred to as glass, the visual effects like Flip 3D, and live thumbnails. All of these required a powerful graphics card, and this is why so many adopters ended up disabling all these features despite the fact they loved them.
Windows 7, on the other hand, brought further refinements and made Aero a more mainstream feature, so as a result, many people upgrading to Windows 10 these days expect a similar experience in the new OS. Aero ended up one of the most successful Windows features ever, but Microsoft eventually killed it off with the release of Windows 8 and the introduction of the Metro UI.
Users in a trending discussion on reddit also applaud Windows Vista for all these innovations.
“Vista was my first OS on a personal laptop, I have a lot of fond memories of it. I still love the aesthetic of it and wish microsoft would go back in this direction,” one user explains. “Vista is still my favorite OS in terms of aesthetics. It's crazy to see Microsoft consider Windows 8 as an improvement in UI compared to Vista. And now with Windows 10 and "Fluent UI" they've found an ok compromise between the two. Although IMO it could still be less flat,” another one continues.
Windows Vista officially exited support on April 11, 2017 after previously reaching the end of mainstream support on April 10, 2012.
Third-party market share figures indicate that Windows Vista is still in use on a very limited number of devices, but the majority of users have already upgraded to newer Windows. In the meantime, however, Windows 7 has also been discontinued, so going forward, the only Windows versions still available for users are Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
This means that Microsoft has more or less killed the Aero interface and the visual effects that made Windows Vista and Windows 7 so successful. Whether or not Windows 10’s Fluent Design will succeed is something that remains to be seen, especially as the implementation of its components is taking place at a really slow pace these days. Microsoft keeps bringing Fluent Design updates to Windows 10 every now and then, basically with the release of new feature updates, so it’ll still take some time until the rollout is completed.
In the meantime, check out the gallery below to see how beautiful Windows Vista was in its early days on the market.
