While Windows Vista is an ambitious total overhaul of Windows XP, in the end there's no big gotta-have-it feature or functionality, unless you're a big fan of Aero, its considerably improved and more elegant interface. From a user perspective, there are literally thousands of mostly small advances, but the sum of the parts isn't greater than the whole. Yet Vista is clearly a better operating system than XP.

The decision to upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista will depend largely on what the new operating system can do for you and what hardware you have to run it on. Microsoft has a page listing hardware required to run Windows Vista, and the Beta 2 of the system is available for a download right now. Of course, it's still early, and Microsoft could still change things, but from what we know so far, here are some of the biggest strengths and weaknesses of Windows Vista.

Why you'll like Windows Vista:

It looks stunning
Computers you see in the movies never run XP, they run slick-looking user interfaces. It's mostly eye candy, but it's really nicely done eye candy. Vista's user interface is actually very slick and can be considered better looking than even the Mac OS X. This is how computers should look in the 21st century. After you experience the beautiful new interface, you'll never be able to go back to the old XP look.

It's about security
Windows XP was a good operating system of its time, but times have changed and PC users everywhere are now plagued by viruses, malware and security issues.

Microsoft took the security issues pretty seriously when developing Vista and it shows. Windows Vista has an impressive list of new security features built right into the system: new firewalls and anti-spyware features, tighter user role management and drive encryption technology called "BitLocker", and that's just the start. In fact Vista is so feature rich it may change the landscape of the lucrative desktop security market forever. Microsoft did a lot of things right with Vista security that would make it difficult for malicious software to propagate using the operating system. Vista is much more stable and secure than any previous version of Windows.

One of the biggest vulnerability points has been Microsoft's IE browser. While the just-released IE7 addresses a lot of security issues, IE7 running on Vista takes things to the next level. Running in protected mode, the browser is totally isolated from the rest of the operating system and actively protects against malicious code. This alone would have been worth an upgrade if other perfectly capable browsers like Firefox didn't exist.

The simplest way of searching and sorting
Forget the old system of folders and directories. Microsoft has integrated search throughout its new operating system, and you'll quickly come to wonder how you manage to live without it. You can search, for example, for all documents you wrote, and then save the search as a virtual file folder for later reference without having to physically relocate or make copies of all those files. Media content was given a high priority when developing Vista too. Vista makes it really easy to browse, navigate, tag and play all the content that's important to you.

Built-in diagnostics
Ever faced the nightmares of when a very important program refuses to run, or the whole system crashes without a warning? Dreadful event like these will, thankfully, be a thing of the past when you're using Windows Vista, according to Microsoft.

Vista tells you more things now; from explaining why an application won't run to warning you that there are driver conflicts that prevents your system from shutting down. For example, Vista will listen to your hard drive and report any problems, giving you ample warning to back up your data. Vista will also take care of basic tasks that Windows users should, but never do anyway like defragmenting the hard drive. The users don't notice a thing while Vista takes care of things in the background.

Better help
From what used to be only a few sentences about a problem or a task you want to perform, help in Vista is now changed into a interactive, innovative solution-centre with more options available than ever. For example, you can initiate a remote-assistance session so that someone you trust can take over your PC remotely and diagnose a problem or perform a task for you. You can also go online and search Microsoft's knowledge base for any particular problem you're facing.

Better performance
If you've got more memory in your PC, it'll mean applications can run without creating slow swap files on the hard drive. With USB memory sticks (and other types of portable memory) becoming more and more common and inexpensive, Microsoft has decided to give you the option to harness this type of memory from your USB memory sticks to speed up your PC. When combined with SuperFetch, this technique delivers significantly faster application loading. ReadyBoost works with USB 2.0 drives, Secure Digital cards and Compact Flash cards. And while all of these memory options are slower than RAM, in most cases faster than your hard disk. Also, finally, there's a new feature called Low-priority Input/Output that should keep you productive: in Windows Vista, user applications will get higher priority with system resources than antivirus or defragmentation processes.

Of course, it isn't only good news. There are plenty of things in Vista that you're not exactly going to be fond of.

Will your current hardware run actually Vista?
Get ready for the frustration. All these goodness comes for a steep price. Unless your PC was bought very recently, chances are that your PC won't be able to handle the nicer, sleeker features of Vista. It'll be able deliver core Vista experiences such as innovations in organizing and finding information, security, and reliability, but you'll miss out on the stylish Areo glass interface, sleek animations in the taskbars, and a desktop that looks and feels almost better than a Mac. Most of Vista's new features need a powerhouse to run. High-end powerful processors are a must; a cool gigabyte of RAM in your PC is more of a necessity than a privilege in Windows Vista. And for the first time, get prepared to buy high-end graphics cards just for smoothly running the desktop interface. (But trust me, if you can afford it, the fun and satisfaction of using the Aero glass interface in all its glory is worth the added expense. And once you use the new desktop, you can never accept XP's old blue look.)

Still, old users who want to upgrade to Vista won't get to enjoy the nicer features of Microsoft's sleek new operating system.

Overprotective-ness
Vista is so worried about security, it can seem pretty overprotective at times and this got Microsoft a ton or negative press. The User Account Protection feature, for example, while trying to protect the user from rogue software installs forces users to answer a series of pop-up messages, making the whole process a lot longer than it should be. Worse, whenever you are prompted to respond, the whole desktop goes dark while the pop-up message remains on the screen, preventing you from doing anything else. While this feature can be valuable if rogue spyware attempts to install without your permission, good Internet behaviour will do as much. For most of us, the frequent appearance of User Account Protection on common tasks will be security overkill.

Compatibility issues
Not having all the necessary drivers or not having software compliant with a new operating system is to be expected in the beta of a new operating system, and Vista suffers from that too at times. Even in the final Beta 2 of Vista, testers found a few common drivers missing. That shouldn't be the case anymore when Microsoft releases the operating system, but it's still a concern.

All in all, is Vista the right choice for you? It's a bit hard to tell. Don't get me wrong, but other than its stunning looks, Vista doesn't exactly have a gotta-have-it-no-matter-what feature in it. Still, if you've got the hardware to get the most out of the operating system, and is OK with all the changes Vista will bring in the way you work, Vista is certainly worth it. However, if you're happy with the current Windows XP or have older hardware that won't run Vista properly, you might want to wait a while till Microsoft sorts out the few remaining problems.