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Welcome to Megapage-your resource for Windows XP and Vista.

One thing you've probably heard about Vista is that it needs a significantly more powerful PC to run than Windows XP. That's not exactly true, and Vista should run on pretty much any PC bought in the past couple of years. If you're in any doubt, Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor (http://tinyurl.com/o5bq4) will tell you if your PC is good enough and suggest any upgrades you might need to make.

Once you've installed Vista the Windows Experience Index score tells you how fast your PC is. This tests your processor, memory, graphics and hard disk, so you can see which component is holding your PC back. Instead of listing an application's requirements, manufacturers will be able to list just the required Experience Index score, which should make buying software much easier.

Easy 3D

To run the 3D Aero interface you'll need a DirectX 9-capable graphics card. The interface uses transparency, so applications' title bars are see-through. Some applications can even set the level of transparency, so they can appear ghost-like on your desktop. It looks nice, and Aero's soft lines give Vista a Mac OS X feel.

Aero also gives you Flip 3D, which is the new way of switching between tasks. Instead of pressing Alt-Tab, Windows-Tab cycles through your applications in 3D. We were impressed to discover that if you do this while playing a video, it continues to play. It's good to see that the desktop is now its own object, so you can quickly get back to it without having to minimise all your open applications. However, we'd have liked to have seen a copy of Mac OS X's task-switching feature, which tiles all the open applications on the desktop so that you can select one with a single mouse click.

Gadgets

Vista sees the introduction of the Sidebar, which is pretty much a rip-off of Google's Desktop Search sidebar. As with Google's version, the Sidebar can display Gadgets, such as a clock, calendar and RSS feeds, and you can download new ones, such as the Outlook Info Gadget that we've been using to display our Inbox, Appointments and Tasks. Gadgets aren't locked to the Sidebar, and you can drag and drop them anywhere on your desktop.

Microsoft has also integrated its desktop search into Vista. Unlike Google's Desktop Search, Vista doesn't index your entire computer; it indexes only key folders, including My Documents. This makes sense if you think about it, as this is where you'll keep most of your files. You can add other locations to the index if you like, which is handy if you keep files elsewhere.

The new email client, Windows Mail, which looks and acts like Outlook Express, integrates with the index, so searching through your email is really quick. As with Google's Desktop, you can extend the index to other applications and file-types by downloading iFilters. Many of these are free, but you have to pay for others.

The best thing about the new search engine is that it is integrated into the Start menu and every Explorer window. The Start menu integration is brilliant. Just click the button, start typing and a filtered list appears, divided into web, email, documents and applications to help you find what you're after quickly.

For digital photographers there's the Windows Photo Gallery. It's very similar to Google's Picasa photo editing tool, and lets you organise and categorise your photos and videos into groups so they're easier to browse.

Security

Microsoft has made many improvements under the bonnet, too. Windows XP's security, or lack of it, has been a major cause for concern over the years. Microsoft has made some significant improvements in Windows Vista, but there's still no built-in anti-virus protection.

The most obvious addition is the built-in anti-spyware software called Windows Defender. This utility lets you scan the system for bad software and provides real-time protection in an effort to stop spyware installing itself or making changes to Windows. However, our initial tests indicate that you'll still need a third-party anti-spyware program to keep you safe from Trojans, adware and other privacy-invading programs.

Don't get too excited about this new outbound filtering feature, though: it's not the same thing as the easy-to-use application control systems we usually see on third-party firewalls. By default Windows Firewall allows all outbound connections from any application, which is not ideal and is precisely the main limitation of the Windows XP firewall.

You can choose to block all outbound connections and then manually set up a rule to allow all your favourite programs access to the internet, but this is a tedious and error-prone process. This and other powerful features lie hidden in a special administration area that you access from the Control Panel. Despite the flexibility it provides, it's not a friendly interface. It looks as if third-party security vendors will remain in business for some time to come.

Windows Updates has been given a facelift, too. As with the Windows XP version, it can run automatically or notify you of updates without downloading them. If Microsoft continues to issue frequent security updates, Windows Vista should be no less secure than XP.

In fact, a brand new feature promises to make Vista much more secure. It may annoy you at first, but as long as you don't give in to temptation and disable it, User Access Control should stop subversive software taking control of your PC. This feature alerts you every time the computer is instructed to run powerful programs that can make changes to the system.

For example, even if you are logged in as Administrator, you'll need to click a confirmation button to change firewall, user account or other potentially critical settings. If this confirmation window pops up when you weren't expecting it, because you weren't trying to change a setting, you simply click the Cancel button to stop bad software hacking your system.

Internet Explorer 7, which is included with Windows Vista, not only lacks some of the security problems in the previous version but also includes an indicator that warns you if the site you are visiting is trying to steal your personal information.

Worried parents will welcome the parental controls, which prevent nominated users of the system accessing certain types of sites, using certain types of applications such as internet messaging programs and can even limit computer use to certain times.

Old applications, new features

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Work has gone into other, less well-known parts of Windows. For example, the disk defragmenter is now turned on and scheduled by default, which should keep your PC running more smoothly. When you plug in an external drive you no longer have to wait for ages while Windows searches the disk for content before suggesting the 'best' action to take. Instead, the actions dialog box appears straight away while Windows is searching your disk. It's only a small thing, but it's much less frustrating.

ReadyBoost lets you increase your PC's performance by using a USB thumb drive as virtual memory. When you connect a drive you get the option to use this feature, but it works only with drives that have fast enough transfer rates, and you'll only know this by trying a drive.

Will it work with Vista?

There's one problem that is impossible to get around, and that's support. At the time of writing we ran into lots of software and hardware that wouldn't work. Our benchmarks wouldn't run, and although we managed to get our video-encoding test to work, the score of 259 using an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 was 40 points lower than we'd expect. Call of Duty 2 ran about as quickly as it does under XP, but Doom 3 wouldn't work with ATI's beta graphics drivers.

If you're looking to upgrade an old PC, these compatibility issues could be a headache. Before you buy, check that your hardware and software are supported, and consider upgrading hardware and software if you're set on using Vista.

Windows Vista is very tricky to rate, as you'll be forced to use it next time you buy a new PC anyway. With so much incompatible hardware and software around, it's impossible for us to recommend upgrading to Vista to everyone. In fact, if you've got a perfectly good working copy of Windows XP, you can get free software and tools (Picassa and Google Desktop to name but two) that will give you Windows Vista's main functions, so there's little reason to upgrade now.

That said, if you're looking to build a new PC or have a free upgrade voucher, Vista is excellent, but check that your hardware and software is compatible first. Support from software and hardware manufacturers will improve over the next few months, so it's probably worth waiting for a while anyway.

That said, Vista is far easier to use than Windows XP, it's more secure, looks neater and is pretty much everything we'd hoped for in the next version of Windows. Just make sure you get the Home Premium Version rather than the horribly cut-down Home Basic.

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