FIRST things first: unlike some bloggers in the US, I didn’t get a free high-powered laptop from Microsoft so I could test and write on Windows Vista. At my request and before the freebie uproar, they lent me a laptop so I could preview their new operating system before it was released to consumers at the end of January.

The laptop, a Compaq Presario V3000, used an Intel Core 2 processor running at 1.66 gigahertz (GHz). To make sure Vista had the space it needed to function well, Microsoft increased the built-in memory to 1 gigabyte (GB). The version of the operating system installed is called Windows Vista Ultimate, which has all the features you will need for home and office use.

To get an idea of ​​what Vista is like, I used the notebook as I normally would in both environments.

Compared to Windows XP, Vista is easy on the eyes, thanks to its Windows Aero interface. Each window has a glassy, ​​translucent frame and casts a soft shadow on the desktop. Images behind glass look blurry, giving windows a frosted look. The buttons glow when the mouse pointer hovers over them, and the progress bars fill with a green gel reminiscent of the blue gel bars on the Mac.

The task switcher presents small preview screens of all running programs in a 3D stack that you can cycle through. The taskbar also gives you a small preview of the programs that have been minimized.

Vista’s cool visuals require a minimum of 128 megabytes of video memory on your graphics card, 1 GB of system memory, and a 1 GHz processor. On a less powerful system, Vista will revert to a simple look called Windows Vista Basic which eliminates most of the bells and whistles.

Sometimes an incompatible program will also kick you out of Aero into Vista Basic. Among the programs that did this during my tests were the file sharing program LimeWire and the instant messaging application Trillian. However, Vista takes you back to Aero once the offending program is closed.

Although Microsoft says it has done a lot of testing, expect compatibility issues from time to time. I had no trouble installing and running a bunch of non-Microsoft apps, including Firefox, WinAmp, ObjectDock, and uTorrent. But I had problems when my daughters tried to run the Sims 2 game.

When starting Sims 2 from the desktop shortcut, this warning appeared: “This program has known compatibility issues.” Vista offered three options: search for solutions online, run the program, or cancel it. I ran it and Sims 2 crashed with a useless error message: “Unspecified error”. All I could do was hit the OK button. I checked the solutions online. After a minute or two, another message appears: “No solutions found for The Sims 2.” OK.

By accident, my 12-year-old son discovered an awkward solution. He discovered that in order for Sims 2 to run, he must insert the playback disc and run the setup program when prompted. Then the program will run. Later I found another way: Right click on the shortcut icon, open its properties and choose to run it in XP compatibility mode and as administrator.

Of course, to do any of this, my daughter needed an administrator, me, to type a password, thanks to the improved security in Vista. On a computer shared by many people, those with standard accounts cannot install programs or gain access to certain directories without administrator approval, good protection against viruses and spyware accidentally getting into a system.

This feature is useful at home, where parents may want to set up standard accounts for their children. Parental controls, new in Vista, also let you easily set limits on the days and times the computer can be used and block certain Web sites. This worked fine for Internet Explorer, but it blocked even unspecified sites when I tried to use Firefox.

Out of the box, Vista is more multimedia friendly than XP. Insert an audio CD and one of the options in Windows Explorer is to convert the tracks to MP3 files. Windows Media Player will play, ahem, “cheap” DVDs, without requiring you to confirm the drive in any particular DVD region, at least on the test machine I used. It still won’t play most downloaded AVI files or automatically get the DivX codec you need, so you’ll still need to set it up yourself.

A curious issue I encountered reminded me that it will take some time before all issues are resolved, even on Vista compatible machines.

After using the HP Presario V3000 laptop for a few days, the built-in Altec Lansing speakers suddenly and mysteriously went silent. No amount of fiddling with the speaker and mixer controls would bring it back.

Various online forums traced the problem back to the computer’s high-definition audio speakers, for which no Vista driver was yet available. Microsoft suggests I use the XP drivers, but when this failed to get the speakers back up, they just sent me a replacement laptop that worked, unfortunately, also on loan.

Next: View in the office