Microsoft Unveils Windows Vista Beta 2

New beta delivers a host of tweaks, including three interface options.

SEATTLE -- Windows Vista moved a big step closer to completion today as Microsoft formally released Beta 2 of its next-generation flagship operating system.

"I just came from Redmond and I brought something for you," Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, brandishing a box of Beta 2 DVDs before attendees at the end of a day-long reviewers' workshop in downtown Seattle on Monday. The workshop was held the day before the start of WinHEC--the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference--an annual gathering of hardware developers involved in products that support Windows.

While other recent builds have been labeled Beta 2, Microsoft officials have said those versions were part of the development process leading to today's formal release to between 500,000 and 750,000 developers and IT professionals. Allchin said Vista, which originally was supposed to ship by year's end, remains on track for a planned November release to enterprise customers only, to be followed in early 2007 by its appearance on new PCs and at retail.

For those who have followed the OS's progression from the days when it was code-named Longhorn through the initial beta release last summer, Beta 2 looks generally familiar. But Microsoft has tweaked a number of features.

For example, Vista will have three faces, depending on both the hardware capabilities of your PC and which of the six core versions of the OS (four for consumers, two for businesses) you're running.

The much vaunted Aero interface, with its semi-transparent frames and glistening progress bars, will only appear on PCs with sufficiently robust hardware that run either one of the two corporate-focused versions--Vista Business and Vista Enterprise--or one of the top-of-the-line consumer-oriented Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Ultimate. Microsoft also says that Aero will be more reliable than XP's user interface.

Low-end PCs running Vista Home Basic or Vista Starter editions will run a less glamorous Basic interface. But if you're running either of these lower end editions on a PC that is capable of Aero graphics, you'll get what Microsoft calls the Standard interface, which is Basic with some Aero features such as the increased reliability.

Along with its new look, Vista is introducing a new Microsoft document format, XPS (XML Paper Specification). Documents created with XPS can be shared with people who don't have the originating application but do have an XPS viewer; Microsoft showed an XPS document being viewed in Internet Explorer. While not nearly as full featured as Adobe's popular PDF format, XPS is intended primarily to speed up and improve the quality of printing.

Presentations at the Vista reviewer's workshop focused on several general areas where Microsoft believes the OS will save businesses time and money, most of which it has touted throughout the development process.

Perhaps chief among these are an array of beefed up security measures designed to ward off malware and hacker attacks. Among other things, Microsoft is pushing hard to discourage the widespread practice of having users logged in with administrative privileges, which lets them install software and perform all sorts of other activities that can put a system at risk. The reason IT staffers allow people to log in as administrators is because in Windows XP all other users are barred from performing even some extremely basic tasks, such as changing mouse settings.

Vista will only have two classes of users: administrators and standard users. But standard users will at least be able to make more routine changes--for example, change keyboard settings or install a mouse.

Microsoft officials admit they are still trying to find the right balance between maintaining security and irritating users with too many requests for administrator credentials. For example, some beta testers have criticized the inability of standard users to delete an icon on the so-called public desktop, one that wasn't put there by that user.