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Experts take look at Vista on OS' first anniversary

The Windows Vista operating system celebrated its first birthday late last month, which means it is the perfect time for a system review.

The system is probably running on about 100 million computers by now. While experts have found much to criticize, there are also a lot of positives to be noted.

A year of use shows that Vista is the best Windows operating system when it comes to security.

"Windows Vista is well protected against traditional attacks," says Thomas Caspers of the BSI Federal Office for Security in Information Technology. "But it's not perfect."

About 20 security gaps were discovered in Vista's first year that could have led to serious problems without timely patches from Microsoft.

One of the system's new functions is called User Access Control (UAC). UAC is designed to prevent attacks on system critical areas by requiring Vista to request confirmation of user registration for program installation.

While this is "a step in the right direction," many users find the process cumbersome, says Axel Vahldiek of c't, a Hanover-based computer magazine.

Vahldiek said UAC needs to be improved so users don't need quite as many mouse clicks to make it work. System prompts also need to be more clear.

"It only makes cryptic references to string IDs. A lot of users don't know what to do with that," he said.

Vista's startup procedure has garnered the most criticism, as the system has not been prepackaged with drivers for many programs and hardware.

"The situation has gotten noticeably better," Vahldiek said, with the exception of drivers for some older devices.

Microsoft has given Vista a positive review, but does admit that its introduction was not completely seamless.

"Above all, there were sometimes problems with older programs and older hardware," said Andreas Schoeberger, a product manager.

But Microsoft has also registered a steady decrease in assistance calls to its support teams.
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