First Impressions of Windows Vista Beta 1

Vista? Yeah, I know that its still ‘Longhorn’ at beta 1, but the Windows team managed to get the Vista name in the desktop build info. We can safely assume that Longhorn should be used in the past tense; it’s Vista from here on in.

What can we expect from Windows Vista? I had the opportunity to attend the Longhorn lab event in Seattle last week and it turned out to be a very interesting and inspiring show, albeit one covered by NDA’s. Now that Beta 1 has been released to the very eager beta squad, those of us who traveled to the lab event can spill the beans on our experience.For those of you who not on the official beta, I can safely say that Vista will be a worthwhile substitution for Windows XP. Many will argue that XP didn’t do much over Windows 2000 until SP2 released last summer, Vista will not make that same mistake. An array of new features and a major change in the way we use our personal computers is coming through Vista; a product Microsoft is committed to shipping by Christmas of 2006.

Windows Vista Information @ Microsoft TechNet