Inside Windows Vista, Build 5308
02.22.06

By John Clyman

With today's release of the Windows Vista February CTP (Community Technology Preview), Microsoft has publicly passed a key milestone on the road to launching its new operating system. This release of Vista is "feature-complete", the company says, meaning that all of the fundamental capabilities that Vista will eventually offer are now baked in. Development efforts aren't slowing�the user experience will continue to evolve, bugs will get fixed, performance and compatibility will improve�but the basic shape of the operating system has been solidified, and from here on out we expect to see mostly fine-tuning rather than wholesale changes.

We've been running this latest release, build 5308, for a couple of days now,...