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Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) is the next release of Microsoft Windows, an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, Tablet PCs, and media center PCs.

Microsoft stated in 2007 that it is planning Windows 7 development for a three-year time frame starting after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista, but that the final release date will be determined by product quality.

Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade with the goal of being fully compatible with existing device drivers, applications, and hardware. Presentations given by the company in 2008 have focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, most notably Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are no longer included with the operating system; they are instead offered separately as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.

Development

Originally, a version of Windows codenamed Blackcomb was planned as the successor to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. Later, Blackcomb was delayed and an interim, minor release, codenamed "Longhorn", was announced for a 2003 release. By the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb. After three major viruses exploited flaws in Windows operating systems within a short time period in 2003, Microsoft changed its development priorities, putting some of Longhorn's major development work on hold in order to develop new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Development of Longhorn was also "reset" in September 2004.

Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006, and again to Windows 7 in 2007. In 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system.

Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that the next version of Windows would "be more user-centric." Gates later said that Windows 7 will also focus on performance improvements; Steven Sinofsky later expanded on this point, explaining in the Engineering Windows 7 blog that the company was using a variety of new tracing tools to measure the performance of many areas of the operating system on an ongoing basis, to help locate inefficient code paths and to help prevent performance regressions.

Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows 7 will not have the kind of compatibility issues with Vista that Vista has with previous versions. Speaking about Windows 7 on 16 October 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed compatibility between Vista and Windows 7. Ballmer also confirmed the relationship between Vista and Windows 7, indicating that Windows 7 will be an improved version of Vista.

Features

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

According to reports sent to TG Daily, the Milestone 1 build of Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors and a new version of Windows Media Center. New features in Milestone 1 also reportedly include Gadgets being integrated into Windows Explorer, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, the ability to visually pin and unpin items from the Start Menu and Taskbar, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack being integrated, Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion.

Many new items have been added to the Control Panel including: Accelerators, ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Infrared, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, Windows Solution Center, and Display. Windows Security Center has been renamed the Windows Solution Center (Windows Health Center in earlier builds) which encompass both security and maintenance of the computer.

The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch has been merged with the buttons to create an enhanced taskbar or what Microsoft internally refers to as the "Superbar". This enhanced taskbar also enables the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks. The taskbar has become more similar to Mac OS X's Dock.

For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code (as opposed to.NET based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages, and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.

At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB.

Antitrust regulatory attention

As with other Microsoft operating systems, Windows 7 is being studied by federal regulators who oversee the company's operations following the 2001 United States Microsoft antitrust case settlement. According to status reports filed, the three-member panel began assessing prototypes of the new operating system in February 2008. Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research said that, " challenge for Windows 7 will be how can they continue to add features that consumers will want that also don't run afoul of regulators."

See also

• History of Microsoft Windows
• Comparison of Microsoft Windows versions

References

1. http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2008/10/28/windows-7-unveiled-today-at-pdc-2008.aspx
2. "Windows 7 Build 6.1.7000 Beta 1 (Englisch)". Winfuture.de.
3. "Windows 7 Build 6.1.7000 Beta 1 (German)". Winfuture.de.
4. "Cnet: Next version of Windows: Call it 7".
5. ^ Foley, Mary J (20 July 2007). "Windows Seven: Think 2010". ZDNet. Retrieved 2007-09-19. Cite error: The named reference "zdnet592" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
6. Nash, Mike (28 October 2008). "Windows 7 Unveiled Today at PDC 2008". Windows Team Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
7. LeBlanc, Brandon (28 October 2008). "How Libraries & HomeGroup Work Together in Windows 7". Windows Team Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
8. LeBlance, Brandon (28 October 2008). "The Complete Windows Experience – Windows 7 + Windows Live". Windows Team Blog. Microsoft. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
9. Lettice, John (2001-10-24). "Gates confirms Windows Longhorn for 2003". The Register. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
10. Thurrott, Paul (14 February 2007). "Windows "7" FAQ". Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
11. Fried, Ina (2008-10-13). "Microsoft makes Windows 7 name final". CNET. Retrieved 2008-10-13.
12. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (2008). "For Microsoft's Windows, 7th time's a charm". Retrieved 2008-10-27. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
13. Steven Levy (3 February 2007). "Bill Gates on Vista and Apple's 'Lying' Ads".
14. Bill Gates (12 May 2007). "Bill Gates: Japan—Windows Digital Lifestyle Consortium".
15. Sinofsky, Steve (15 December, 2008). "Continuing our discussion on performance". Engineering Windows 7. Microsoft. Retrieved 2008-12-18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
16. Marius Oiaga (24 June 2008). "Windows 7 Will Not Inherit the Incompatibility Issues of Vista".
17. ^ Dignan, Larry (2008). "Ballmer: It's ok to wait until Windows 7; Yahoo still 'makes sense'; Google Apps 'primitive'". Retrieved 2008-10-17. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
18. ^ Gruener, Wolfgang (2008-01-16). "TG Daily — Windows Vista successor scheduled for a H2 2009 release?". TG Daily. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
19. ThinkNext.net: Screenshots from a blogger with Windows 7 M1
20. Softpedia (2008). "Windows 7 User Interface – The Superbar (Enhanced Taskbar)". Retrieved 2008-11-12. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
21. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=594414
22. http://www.osnews.com/story/20613/Is_Windows_7_Too_Much_Like_Mac_OS_X_
23. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/28/windows_7_vista_lessons/
24. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=254670
25. "Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code". PDC 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-26.
26. "Windows 7: Deploying Your Application with Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce". PDC 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-26.
27. "Windows 7: Writing World-Ready Applications". PDC 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-26.
28. "WinHEC 2008 GRA-583: Display Technologies". Microsoft. 2008-11-06. Retrieved 2008-12-04.
29. "Windows 7 High Color Support". Softpedia. 2008-11-26. Retrieved 2008-12-05.
30. Keizer, Gregg F. (2008). "Windows 7 eyed by antitrust regulators". Retrieved 2008-03-19. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

• Engineering Windows 7 - MSDN Blogs
• The Windows 7 Blog for Developers - MSDN Blogs
• Official Windows 7 Website - Microsoft

• Windows 7