It took the good people at Microsoft a while — a lifetime, actually —but they’ve finally managed to roll out a new version of its industry-dominating Windows operating system (OS). Scheduled for a February 4 Egypt release, the new platform has been the subject of much gushing in nerdly circles, but we wanted to see for ourselves if it was worth the wait, the expense and the hardware requirements. Egypt Today tested the beta 2 version (or prerelease test) of the new Windows Vista — we were less than blown away.

At first it was difficult for this Macintosh-using reviewer to identify the visual improvements of Vista. It took a few minutes for me to recognize that the features I had come to know as ‘normal’ were in fact incredible and outlandish to users of Windows XP. Conveniences such as a one-click search bar in directory folders and generic mini-applications have been available on Macs for years.

On the other hand, these features would be marvelous to someone upgrading from a previous Windows version. In fact, with the exception of some confusing inconsistencies in the Explorer menu displays, the experience of interacting with Vista is quite similar to interacting with XP. The default interface is far more attractive than the toys-and-bubble-gum scheme XP had going, however — it now features subtler colors and translucent windows, which give the user a sense of 3D interaction.

The old address bar is much more functional. Rather than an editable text box displaying the user’s location on the file structure (such as C:\ProgramFiles\Office\Word), the address is displayed as a series of drop-down menus. While the new address display is very similar to the old one, the menu system allows the user to quickly access parallel folders. This is a clear improvement over XP’s Back button + Back button + Back button + double click interface.

The Start menu is a little more discreet than it once was. An XP user looking for an item linked from the ‘All Programs’ directory may fill the screen with cascading submenus before finally reaching the desired file. Vista’s Start menu, on the other hand, displays these folders within a portion of the landscape it occupied on the first click. This makes navigating the ‘All Programs’ list much less daunting.

The Start menu’s more efficient interface is one of Vista’s improvements over XP.

Vista has marginally improved the security options over previous versions. The OS now comes with an anti-spyware program called Windows Defender, which identifies and removes unauthorized programs that may be gathering data or otherwise misusing the machine. What it doesn’t come with is anti-virus software.

What this amounts to is Microsoft largely passing the responsibility of its OS security on to the user and third-party software developers. Users shouldn’t have to spend half their time and make monthly payments to mend the holes of their leaky systems. The security situation in the Windows world is nothing short of desperate, and the largest software company in the world should be able to provide real security to its customers.

Nothing is certain, however — we’ll have to wait until the hackers get cracking at Vista before we’ll know if the new Windows is going to be as dangerous to use as the old one.

The Vista beta I previewed featured a very familiar list of programs packaged with the OS install: Notepad, Wordpad, Paint. Nearly all the single-use applications in the Accessories folder are identical to those packaged with previous builds of Windows — some are even as old as Windows 95.

WordPad is even more limited than before: It no longer allows users to save files to Word’s .doc format, which is quite puzzling considering that Word belongs to Microsoft. Paint is still absolutely the worst program you’ll ever have to use.

Microsoft, if you’re reading this, that’s the point — now and again everyone has to use the OS-package software (like when Word crashes for the fifth time in an hour), and every time we get a warning that Notepad can’t open a file because it’s too big, we all curse the company which designed the program in the first place.

One should be able to expect more, but with Microsoft it’s probably best not to try. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me over and over again over the course of a decade, shame on me.

After being thoroughly under-whelmed by the lackluster Windows Vista, it put a smile on our face to preview Microsoft Office 2007. The Microsoft Office suite of applications is easily the world’s most used set of computer programs, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint being the de facto standards in their fields. According to Business Week magazine, Office enjoys a 95% market share with more than 400 million active users. Microsoft Office 2007 is the first new version of these ubiquitous applications since 2003 and, more importantly, represents the first major user interface upgrade since the inception of the software in 1990.

Indeed, the biggest change has been in the user interface, which has been completely revolutionized. In the past, Microsoft Office was rich with thousands of powerful features that only a tiny fraction of users ever took advantage of; many options were effectively hidden away, nestled within layer after layer of menu items and options boxes.

All this is likely to change in Office 2007. Almost all the available features of each application are accessible within one or two mouse clicks, via the innovative new “ribbon” — a strip of buttons and drop-down boxes lining the top of the application window that has replaced the menus and toolbars that have been fundamental to the Microsoft Office interfaces since the beginning.

With the ribbon, users are presented with a range of options relevant to whatever activity they are currently undertaking. If you have selected a block of text, all the options for text editing appear via graphical buttons and drop-boxes on the ribbon. Move away from the text and select a picture, and the ribbon options change, showing instead a multitude of options for editing and manipulating images. It is such an incredibly intuitive and useful interface, it makes you wonder why it took the thousands of genius engineers at Microsoft more than 15 years to think of it.

“Color Scales” makes Excel more visually intuitive and easier on the eye.

Another major innovation of the Office 2007 suite is the proper implementation of style sheets — simple document formats that can be applied with the click of a button. A style sheet creates an overall “look and feel,” applying coordinated colors, text styles and page layouts throughout the document to give a highly professional appearance. Although this feature has been available for some time, it was complicated and poorly implemented, and as such was used mainly by Office “professionals.” In Office 2007, it takes literally seconds to apply a style sheet to a document.

Aside from the major interface improvements, a number of small but significant features have been added — many that will make the life of the average user much easier. In Word, a live word count is now displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the screen (already a feature on the Mac version of Word), and the Live Preview feature shows the result of any formatting change that is being considered. Hover over a button with the mouse and the impact of clicking that button will temporarily be shown on the screen; move away from the button and the formatting returns to normal. Click the button and the change becomes permanent.

In Outlook, a vastly improved search functionality means that as you type into the search box, results are instantly displayed, including contacts, emails and calendar entries. This has been a feature of competing programs such as Apple’s Mail and Mozilla’s Thunderbird for some time, and its addition to Outlook is most welcome. Excel has a nifty new feature called Color Scales that will color cells with progressively different shades according to the value within the cell; imagine cells automatically ranging from light yellow to dark orange depending on the size of the number. The accountant in us all will weep with joy.

These new features merely scratch the surface of what is a substantial and entirely positive upgrade to what was already a powerful, feature-packed family of applications. Microsoft has responded effectively and innovatively to the “bloat” of previous Office versions by simultaneously simplifying and expanding the functionality of its flagship software.

For a company often criticized for its slow, bureaucratic and un-original approach to software development, Microsoft has produced a product that is a genuine innovation, likely to keep the Office brand at the center of computer life worldwide for many years to come. et