The Vista Desktop. Now with Aero! Home Premium ~ Business ~ Enterprise ~ Ultimate

Once you've recovered from the excitement of the Welcome Center, you get your first glimpse of the full Vista desktop.

All of the usual Windows landmarks are herethe Start menu, taskbar, and Recycle Binbut they've been given a drastic cosmetic overhaul.

If you're into this kind of thing, here's the complete list of what makes Aero Aero:

• The edges of windows are thicker (for easier targeting with your mouse). Parts of the Start menu and window edges are transparent. Windows and dialog boxes cast subtle shadows on the background, as though they're floating.

• A new, bigger, more modern font is used for menus and labels.

• When you point to a window button without clicking, the button "lights up." The Minimize and Maximize buttons glow blue; the Close button glows red.

• The default button in a dialog boxthe one Microsoft thinks you really want, like Save or Printpulses gently, using fading color intensity to draw your eye.

  The Vista desktop, like the XP desktop before it, is a victim of Microsoft's clean-freak tendencies. It's awfully prettybut awfully barren. Windows veterans may miss the handy desktop icons that once provided quick access to important locations on your PC, like My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, and Internet Explorer.

  You can still get to these locationsthey're listed in your Start menubut opening them requires two mouse clicks (including one to open the Start menu)an egregious expenditure of caloric effort.

  However, if you miss the older arrangement, it's easy enough to put these icons back on the desktop. To do so, right-click a blank spot on the desktop; from the shortcut menu, choose Personalize.
  
  Now the Personalization dialog box appears. In the Tasks pane on the left side, click "Change desktop icons."

  Checkboxes for the common desktop icons await your summons: Computer, Network, Internet Explorer, Control Panel, and User's Files

  Turn on the ones you'd like to install onto the desktop and then click OK. Your old favorite icons are now back where they once belonged.

• Little animations liven up the works, especially when you minimize, maximize, or close a window.

Aero isn't just looks, eitherit also includes a couple of features, like Flip 3D and live taskbar icons.

Windows Vista also includes all-new sounds, toothe little blips and bleeps you hear when you wake up or shut down the PC, get an error message, and so on.Microsoft wishes you to know, in particular, that the new Windows startup sound "has two parallel melodies, played in an intentional 'Win-dows Vis-ta' rhythm; consists of four chords, one for each color in the Windows flag; is 4 seconds long, end to end; and is a collaboration between contributors Robert Fripp (primary melody), Tucker Martine (rhythm), and Steve Ball (harmony and final orchestration)." Any questions?

What you're seeing is the new face of Windows, known to fans as Aero. (It supposedly stands for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open, but you can't help suspecting that somebody at Microsoft retrofitted those words to fit the initials.)

The Aero design may not actually be Authentic or whatever, but it does look clean and modern. You'll see it, however, only if you have a fairly fast, modern PC. Basically, you need a Windows Experience Index score of 3 or higher, meaning a good amount of memory and a recent graphics card with Vista-specific drivers.

Furthermore, the Aero features are available only in the more expensive versions of Vista: Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate.

If you have a slower computer or the Home Basic version, you'll be able to enjoy all of Vista's featuresbut they just won't look quite as nice. You'll use them without the transparencies, animations, and other eye candy.

Nobody ever said Microsoft's specialty was making things simple.