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Windows Vista, expected to run on 35 million American computers within a year, debuted before students this week.

University technicians introduced Microsoft Corporation’s new computer operating system to students with hour-long presentations in the Student Learning Center Tuesday and Wednesday.

While students can now buy the software for their personal computers, the University does not yet have concrete plans for deploying Vista in computer labs and elsewhere on campus.

“I don’t know of an overall plan for institutional computers,” said Bert DeSimone, communications director for the University’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

For now, computer labs such as the one in the Student Learning Center will stay on the Windows XP platform, which has been on the market since 2001.

Vista replaces the popular XP version of the Windows operating system – the basic software millions of computers worldwide use to control hardware components and run other programs.

Microsoft released Vista to consumers at 39,000 retail locations Jan. 29, according to a news release on its corporate Web site.

Within its first year, Vista is expected to be installed on 90 million computers worldwide and 35 million in the U.S., according to research sponsored by Microsoft and conducted by IDC, a market intelligence agency.

Technicians at Enterprise Information Technology Services will wait until Microsoft releases the first service pack, or update, for Vista to make sure all the bugs are worked out before installing the software in the labs, DeSimone said.

But he said the EITS technicians responsible for the SLC lab already are evaluating and testing the software.

George Bond, operations manager for EITS’ Managed Software Distribution, said copies of the software are available to staff for testing purposes but not for production, or general, use.

The Board of Regents negotiates a site license covering all computers in the university system under the Microsoft Campus Agreement, he said.

But, he said he did not know the cost of the license or how many computers on campus are using XP and will be upgraded to Vista.

Andrew Wilson, a senior network consultant with EITS’ Student Technology Support, conducted Wednesday’s presentation with John Gorzynski, assistant manager at STS.

Wilson described the features Vista adds to the Windows platform such as transparent menu effects and a “pretty” user interface, called Aero.

Several versions of Vista are available, priced from $99 to $399 depending in part on the software already on the buyer’s computer.

Wilson said he recommends the Premium version of Vista because it is only $40 to $60 more than the Basic version and adds valuable features such as organizing media files.

Vista requires increased hardware specifications compared to those needed to operate XP.

Wilson recommended a computer with one to two gigabytes of RAM, the system memory used to run several tasks at once in Vista.

Mathias Hackl, an exchange student from Austria attending the presentation, said he came to learn more about Vista after a friend who already owns it showed him how it allows users to work with media such as music and movies.

Amanda Phillips, a sophomore from Newnan, said she came find out what Vista was all about after hearing about it from her father.

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