Customer support Microsoft went some way to making up for this by drip-feeding security updates and patches as free downloadable updates and by adding improved security features to XP via a downloadable . Servif:e Pack (SP2). This practice of contenually adding features, functions and fixes via updates continues today and forms a large part of Windows XP brought with it a radical visual.

overhaul MIcrosoft's strategy - for Vista. Most of these downloads add small but important software updates to address specific security issues or bugs as they are,discovered, but occasionally new or improved features are added too. Most recently, Microsoft issued the first Vista Service Pack (SP1), which brought together all the updates and patches thus far and introduced a few new features, including enhanced hibernation and file copying.



Vista was released to a mixed reception in 2007. Much of the criticism centred on Vista's increased system requirements and problems with backwards compatibility. The truth is, however, Microsoft has never built a safer, more- flexible, better looking or more feature-packed operating system than Vista.

Vista comes with almost all of the features from previous versions of Windows - most of which have been radically overhauled and are either easier to use (such as Vista's improved networking tools), much more effective (such as Security Center) or include vastly improved performance or more options (such as Windows Movie Maker). Not only that, Microsoft has added even more extras to Vista than it did with XP. Now there's a proper Photo Gallery, a built-in backup utility, an alternative Media Center interface and those are just a few of the higher profile new arrivals. With Vista, the features list has spiralled out of proportion; so much so that it's barely feasible to list each individual component that makes up the whole.

Indeed, if we were to take a critical angle for a moment, we would perhaps pick up Microsoft on the mixed messages Vista sends out. On the one hand, it's the simplest Windows release to date, thanks to features like Instant Search which makes it easy to find anything - programs, files, settings - by typing a keyword into the Start menu search box. At the same time, it's also the most complex and unwieldy version of Windows till date, with too many tools to take in at once and dozens of options many users may never discover.