A couple of years ago a deeply flawed operating system checked into rehab for a do-over. Windows XP, having suffered at the hands of vulnerability researchers for too long -- exploited and abused, memory muddled and kernel corrupted -- got service packed into a new OS by the team at Redmond.

Since then, Windows XP SP2 has hit a few hitches, but life has been so much better.

So who's this Vista character? Its security is supposed to be miles ahead of XP, and it's apparently more stable and better looking, too. Show off bastard.

A couple of weeks ago I asked Microsoft's PR agency to send me a copy of the new OS so I could have a play with it. Its big draw is apparently security, so I thought it would make sense to have a squiz. Sure enough, a couple of days later, a copy of Microsoft's new flagship OS Vista turned up on my doorstep.

I installed it on my laptop, and on the whole the experience has been positive.

But if XP was that semi-loveable guy with a few problems, Vista is your mother -- annoying in a completely different way. Considering Windows has a bad rap for being insecure and allowing users to do too much damage to themselves, Vista's security interface is surprisingly constrictive.

Every time you want to do anything fun, like run an ActiveX control or some such, there's Vista, asking you if you really should.

Now, there is something to be said for a computer that asks you if it should be doing something when that something's a bit suspect. But having to click "ok" on a box every time you right-click on a Web-page to view its source seems a tad excessive. Keep in mind this is an actioned request -- right click, view source. It's not like some fancy script is trying to open notepad by itself and screw with it.

The security geeks at Redmond, who I interviewed last week, say the interface is indeed busy for new users, but quickly settles down. After all, with all that installing new software and plugins, the interface is bound to be noisy for a while, until you've taught it some rules. But hey, I can tell you this, I have dialogue box fatigue already. Sorry guys, but you went overkill with the interface. Apart from that, however, Vista seems pretty good, even though the ultimate edition costs $750. (WTF) It's certainly a step forward security wise, and traditional bugs will be harder to exploit.

All in all, I'm happy to say that Microsoft's work has paid off. It's not perfect, and they went overboard on the annoying dialogue popups, but it seems that Vista has raised the bar. It just feels like a better OS than XP.

That seems to be the buzz in the research community also. I had a chat to Marc Maiffret from eEye Digital Security about Vista, and he had some interesting things to say about it. You can listen to that interview on my weekly podcast at ITRadio.com.au.