As early as 2001, rumors regarding Microsoft’s next generating operating system, at that time known by its code name Longhorn, were being spread around the Internet. In July of 2005, Microsoft officially named Longhorn Microsoft Windows Vista. The tagline for the product was “Clear, Confident, Connected.” Although the product was originally expected to debut some time in 2004, Windows Vista has been strategically postponed by Microsoft on a number of occasions. Now at last Microsoft has officially released Microsoft Windows Vista. In addition, other products from the Microsoft world have also been released including Microsoft Office 2007 and their latest release of the Microsoft Exchange Server.

In truth, the release last Friday of the suite of Microsoft products was only for businesses. For the common customer, the launch date remains at January 30, 2007. Much is already known about Microsoft Windows Vista, a lot of it due to the large Beta program Microsoft ran for the product. In addition to providing invaluable feedback, the Beta program also proved to be a very useful marketing program which increased awareness and interest of the new operating system.

Windows Vista has taken Microsoft 5 years to develop. In the course of development, several features have been either cut or added. The reasons behind the axing of some features have varied. For some, it was because the feature was deemed unnecessary, while for others Microsoft had to cut in order to be able to have the product out of the door by the end of 2006.

A major issue that Microsoft is focusing on in their new operating system is security. Windows XP was full of security issues, and thus had new updates coming out very often in order to patch these security holes. With Windows Vista, Microsoft has attempted to write the code in a manner which will prevent these security problems without even letting them have a chance. In addition to security, Microsoft has also completely revamped the user interface of Windows Vista. The new GUI which has been completely changed around might even be described by some as “drastic”.

In the following pages we will try to introduce the main characteristics of the new operating system to you. Performance analysis will be carried out in a successive article, however, for right now we want to introduce the new OS and its main features.