I look at the main page for Vista, and I feel utterly overwhelmed, melting into indecision for where to start. Obviously it does a lot:

• Context based Communication
• Community driven Information Sharing
• Secure Communication with Digital ID support
• Information Aggregation, Personalization and Publishing from different sources with Event Notification using channels
• Integration of desktop applications with the Internet and web services world
• Integration of Communities with Context driven Communication
• Easy Development of web services clients

In addition to:

• Vista is a Universal WebServices Client that supports Channels for Information and Content via XML/HTTP/SOAP/XML-RPC.
• Vista supports Digital IDs with Message Encryption.
• Vista is the World's first Cross Conferencing client across AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and IRC messaging services.
• Vista lets you develop your own custom web service clients that can be deployed on the Vista platform using your current skill sets.
• Vista treats you as the owner of your data and supports standard security mechanisms like PKI, SSL, Blowfish, etc.
• Vista allows you to customize it by adding and removing channels/features.
• Vista supports normal IM features like Message History and File Transfer.
• Vista allows you to send SMS messages and publish to Web Blogs.
• Vista lets you play or develop games/add-ons like Chess with your buddies.
• No Banner Ads and No Spyware modules in Vista.

In English, this means that "you can chat and also play games like Chess with them... you can chat with your buddies, on different messaging systems, in a single window... you can pick from over 100 news sources... Vista users can see your Digital Certificates, which verifies your identity... and Vista allows users to automate the blog publishing process." It looks like a free download, and they even let corporate users co-brand the software.

Drawbacks include a Windows-only implementation and what looks to me like a daunting interface. There are some interesting ideas here, so when I have more time maybe I'll play around with it. [found via Bryce's Radio Experiments]