As I write this column, I’m running build 5365 – which is a few builds short of “True Beta 2”, the really, hard-and-fast Beta release of Vista – but it’s pretty close to the likely final version. So, what’s it like? It’s only been a month or two since I last looked at a build in any detail, but there have been lots of small changes. The dock is now an active area at the right-hand side of the Desktop, into which you can drop a whole heap of nice-looking widgets that will slot into this area. Many of these widgets make great use of the 3D rendering effects in the full version of the Vista display engine. I used an “Ultimate” installation key of this build, so I should have been seeing all the new toys and features.

This build looks much more polished and although there are many holes, it’s clearly finally coming together. At this late stage you can be assured this is pretty much what will ship. The rest of 2006 will be spent on bug fixes and filling in gaps, but don’t expect any major additions.

There is, however, still scope for things to be pulled out. That’s the nature of software development, and is nothing new for Microsoft. Microsoft so often goes wrong by ordering a heroic development program every five years or so, winding everyone up to such a fever pitch that we’re grateful when the damn thing finally arrives. It’s hard to retain the interest of users, especially home/SoHo users, over such a lengthy period.

Compare this with Apple’s approach – it’s managed to bring out almost annual releases of OS X that deliver truly useful and worthwhile improvements. Existing users are more than happy to hand over their $100 for each upgrade. It walks, talks and looks like a subtle and successful subscription model. This suggests Apple has found its way over the big hump that’s so far prevented Microsoft from establishing a rolling software subscription model that remains inclusive and non-threatening to users.

Somehow Microsoft gets it wrong every time. One only needs to look at Windows Genuine (Dis)Advantage – now expanded to include Office in the past few weeks –to see how cringingly badly Microsoft can handle this sort of issue.

Slow recovery
One function I wanted to try in the new build was the backup-and-recovery tool, which promises to take a system snapshot from which you can recover the whole machine. I fired up the app, found some blank DVDs and sat back waiting to be amazed. Regrettably, I’m still waiting.

This application can only write images to either recordable CDs or DVDs, or to another hard disk (one assumes they intend this to be an external device rather than one that’s built into your laptop alongside the main partition). I inserted a DVD, pressed the relevant buttons and watched one of those glowingly animated progress bars for well over an hour – and it didn’t even reach halfway. And this for an installation that consists of just the plain Vista code with no other applications or data. As an aside, the system tells me I have 78.1GB free out of the 87.8GB partition I set up during the install, even though I’d told the setup program I wanted a 90GB partition. When I ask for 90GB, I expect to get 90GB.

This, however, is beside the point. If this is typical of the backup speed of the application, it will quickly get binned. I fear this tool, so critically needed in Windows, will fall into the “must try harder” basket.

Vista mañana?
I’ve been reading reports from some analysts who think Vista might get delayed until Q3 next year, which is of course entirely possible. It’s hard to remember an occasion when Microsoft did ship an OS according to the originally promised timescale. One area that might well wreck the release schedule of Vista is how well the installation process can cope with the upgrade scenario, and deal cleanly with machines that started out with a late installation of Windows 98 or ME, then were hauled kicking and screaming through a messy and anxiety-prone upgrade to XP, and now have to be yanked into the Vista world.

Why such concern? Because these machines will be the ones that are full of rubbish. Their Registries will be stuffed to the gills with old device drivers for long-discarded printers and half-uninstalled applications that should have been dumped years ago. You can create a pretty big mess in seven years of trying out shareware utilities, and that’s before you even begin to think about the likely virus and spyware infections lurking on the hardware. The Vista setup program does have an upgrade feature in its initial dialog boxes, so there’s the intention to offer an upgrade path, but this is, perhaps significantly, disabled in current builds.

To be clear, you can’t currently upgrade from anything else to Vista, and there’s no doubt that this upgrade process is the part of the installation route that will keep the development team awake at nights. It won’t matter a jot how much testing they do, because the proof of the pudding can’t come until the public tries the Beta 2 release.

Maybe Beta 2 won’t have any upgrade option at all; maybe Microsoft is going to play a game of chicken to see just how late it can delay the public testing of the upgrade scenario; maybe someone at Microsoft (in a particularly kamikaze frame of mind) thinks this can be delayed until after the product has actually shipped. If so, it will be an act of staggering bravery, not to say folly. Nevertheless, the temptation will be huge – who wants to deal with the legacy of XP Home when they might be able to convince users to dump their old hardware; that the old Windows line stopped with XP and that Vista is truly a new beginning.

This isn’t a scenario I’ve seen publicly discussed yet, and maybe I’m overstepping the mark by being too cynical. However, the temptation to eject the upgrade route from the initial shipping will be enormous. It would allow Microsoft to bundle a small, time-limited version of OneCare with the Vista discs, with which to thoroughly scrub an XP machine of nasties before actually doing the upgrade. The more I think of it, the more appealing this approach sounds. WinHEC and the Vista Reviewers Workshop in a couple of weeks should reveal all.