Microsoft hopes to overcome Vista bugs

R Raghavendra / TNN / Dec 28, 2006, 23:14 IST

Text Size

Small
Medium
Large

Microsoft employees worldwide have perhaps contributed most to this belief. It is they who have been using Vista for six-odd months.

BANGALORE: An error in the software code underlying the Internet Explorer 7, ability to increase user privileges, bugs that could enable Microsoft Exchange Mail Server... the list of errors noticed by software developers and hackers in the soon-to-be-released Windows Vista, the next big Operating System from Microsoft, is getting bigger by the day.
But the software behemoth believes that it has just built the world's next secure and reliable platform for computing.
Microsoft employees worldwide have perhaps contributed most to this belief. It is they who have been using Vista for six-odd months.
A total of 100,000 PCs within Microsoft globally have been using this new OS and has infact been the greatest source of feedback for the company.

Ever since the company came up with the beta version of this new OS, there seems to be no end to the grouses in the developer community.
While a number of reports have talked extensively about the manner in which this OS is going to usher a new era in the world of computing, it is the flaws that have attracted more eyeballs and has been in news.
"No software in the world is fully secure. With Vista, we have tried to build the most robust, scalable and reliable operating system. The reason for our decision to postpone the earlier date of launch was because we wanted to be absolutely comfortable with the security of this platform. We have worked immensely on this aspect," said Rishi K Srivastava, director-Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India.

When asked about the biggest grouse of all, where a user would require a minimum of 512MB RAM in order to experience the "Aero" effects in Vista, Srivastava calls this as a "mental block."
Aero is a three-dimensional view of every icon/application that is visible on the computer and enriches the computing experience of the user.
"Vista scales with the kind of OS and memory that you have. It will run on a 256MB RAM too. But here, it will only lack the Aeroglass effects. So it is not right in saying that the software consumes more space," adds Srivastava.
Microsoft has spent a lot of time to make Vista more secure. Whether it is parental control, phishing filters or the automatic virus scanner, Vista has it all.
Every change of software application, records of usage, reasons for slow processor speeds can be accessed just with a click of a button. And this can also be viewed as a graphical depiction for better understanding of your computer functioning.
According to Srivastava, India too has played a significant role in developing Vista. The development centre in Hyderabad has focused on tasks like making more Unix-related applications run on this platform, testing it with corporate customers on various applications as well as customer support.
For now, Vista has already been released for manufacturing with January 30, 2007 as the date for official launch. While the present 500 million Windows users are most likely to think of an upgrade, Microsoft is hoping that more would come on board.

End of Article