First Look at Windows Vista

A select group of testers who downloaded and installed the first beta of Windows Vista (formerly Longhorn) have finally gotten a peek at the new OS.

Microsoft will make Vista available to a wider pool of testers from its MSDN developer program in August, but about 10,000 testers have already begun exploring the system's new features. They also have access to version 7 of Internet Explorer, which offers tabbed browsing and RSS compatibility (features that Firefox has offered for some time), as well as stronger security.

Two of Vista's key features, the Avalon graphics engine (a.k.a. Windows Presentation Foundation) and the Indigo web services architecture, will be offered as add-ons for Windows XP, for those who like those features yet don't want to upgrade to Vista.

Source: ZDNet