Productivity: There have been some small additions to the default productivity applications bundled previously. It seems Microsoft has taken the Windows and Apple OS comparisons to heart and done serious re-working on its default applications. You now get an overhauled Windows Backup (codenamed SafeDocs) which lets you schedule backups to different drives, including CDs and DVDs, find files in unlabelled drives, and of course, automatically backup/restore data.

The better feature here is an integrated Shadow Copy Client, which can be enabled from the HDD’s Properties dialog box. The concept is that the OS caches older versions of your files, so if an important file gets corrupted, or gets overwritten with an unfinished version, you simply go to the file’s properties and choose the needed version from the Previous Versions pane. You get multiple versions that you can restore from, which make this feature a handy tool for human errors.

Super Fetch: Remember that bulky Pre-Fetch directory that stored all your frequently used applications to load them quickly? Vista takes this to the next level by letting you put this Fetch folder on a removable drive. For instance, if you have a 1GB flash drive (size can vary), you can plainly plug it in and increase your available Fetch memory. It’s a great feature that should free up lots of HDD and RAM space.

A plethora of options, like the start menu, driver compatibility and hardware support are still as abysmal as before, but that is not really a fair expectation as a lot can and will change before the final release around Christmas 2006.

Software compatibility is usable at best. Applications such as Office, Firefox, Winamp etcetera run just fine, but try using an obscure application that not too many people have heard of and most likely, Vista will not support it. We still can’t find any specifics on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support in this build but going by the recent announcements, by the time Beta 2 is launched in November, we just might find Vista supporting HD-DVD natively.

So far, the only revolutionary aspect (and that too only for Windows users) about Microsoft’s next generation OS is its great user interface. On the other hand, however, it has fairly revolting hardware requirements and is surely not for the faint hearted.

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