Vista Boasts Redesigned Interface

A substantially redesigned user interface and shell is the most immediately noticeable difference between Windows Vista and Windows XP. Many of these changes are intended to make common tasks easier for end users or to highlight new OS functions, and some are look-and-feel changes made primarily for marketing purposes. Additionally, several new features—including integrated desktop search and a Sidebar for running small script-based applets on the desktop—could be leveraged by third-party developers to improve or promote their applications.

Why Change?

When designing a major new version of the Windows desktop, Microsoft has several reasons for changing the interface:

• Easing common tasks, such as running applications and finding files
• Highlighting new OS functions so users will discover them
• Providing a new and clearly different look and feel for marketing and promotional purposes.

For customers, the benefits of the new interface are hard to quantify—some enhancements may save time in the long run but require user retraining in the short-term, and small time savings for hundreds or thousands of end-users doesn’t necessarily translate to more work output for an organization as a whole.