Vista Aero Glass

Let's talk about what everyone else has talking about in the new Windows Vista – the Aero Glass interface. If this is the first time you have heard of it, Aero Glass is the new interface for Windows Vista.

Mac users have long been luxuriating in the Luna interface. Although the wait has been long, we are glad Microsoft finally listened to us. So, did Aero Glass live up to its hype? Yes and No.

Yes, because it gives Windows Vista a fresher look, compared to the dull and bland interfaces of previous Windows user interfaces. Yes, because we can finally sit next to Mac users in Starbucks without feeling embarrassed.

No, because it uses too much processor resources and requires a high-end graphics card just to display the user interface. Microsoft recommends a GPU with 128MB of RAM. I wonder if businesses will spend hundreds of dollars per system to upgrade their graphics cards so that their workers can benefit from the nicer visuals! We seriously doubt it!

Before you get all excited about Aero Glass, do note that unless your computer comes with a GPU, Aero Glass is not accessible. It won't even appear as an option. Fortunately, the notebook came with a GPU. We had to load Microsoft’s WDDM driver though as NVIDIA’s driver for the GeForce FX Go5200 was not compatible with Aero Glass.

With the Aero Glass interface, everything is a visual fanfare. We only tried Vista for 2 to 3 days but we are still excited about it. We have no idea how long this excitement will last though. Time will tell.

The user interface is still not as refined as that of a Mac, but it’s still a very good attempt by Microsoft. You get shadows around windows, you can get a see-through, glass-like effect on the window borders as well as the taskbar. This glass-like effect, however, does not appear when the window is maximized.

Window animation is now smoother and more fluid. You also get to preview open applications. Overall, the user interface looks a lot more animated.

Seasoned Windows users should already be familiar with the Alt-Tab function, which browses through all the open applications. Vista improved on this function by creating realtime previews of each application as well as adding the Windows desktop to the list.

With Vista and Aero Glass, you will get to use a '3-D Flip' feature which previews the open applications in three dimensions.

To access to this feature, users have to press Windows-Tab combination. Curiously, the Help file indicated that Alt-Windows was the key-combination to use. However, we tried almost every possible key-combination and will stand by our word that as far as release 5384 is concerned, Windows-Tab is the correct key-combination.

We personally think it's quite ugly as the windows have really jagged edges. There was evidently no anti-aliasing. Personally, we are going to stick with Alt-Tab.

Aero Glass doesn't come with many options for you to play with. All you get to do is to choose the colour scheme and select the transparency level.

That’s quite surprising for a feature that's so graphics-intensive. You would think that Microsoft would have come up with a more powerful or flexible tool. It's a shame that Aero Glass is limited to the few relatively mundane visual effects. Even the glass-like effect is unrefined.