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, netbooks[1] and media center PCs.[2] Microsoft stated in 2007 they were planning Windows 7 development for a three-year time frame starting after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Microsoft has stated that the final release date would be determined by product quality.[3]
Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade from Vista, with the goal of being fully compatible with device drivers, applications, and hardware with which Windows Vista is already compatible.[4] 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,[5] and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, most notably Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are no longer included with the operating system; they are instead offered separately (free of charge) as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.[6]
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 2003.[7] 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 (Windows Vista) was also "reset" in September 2004.
Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006,[8] and again to Windows 7 in 2007.[3] In 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system.[9][10] The first external release to select Microsoft partners came in January 2008 with Milestone 1 (build 6519).[11]
Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that the next version of Windows would "be more user-centric".[12] Gates later said that Windows 7 will also focus on performance improvements;[13] 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.[14]
Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows 7 will not have the kind of compatibility issues with Windows Vista that Vista has with previous versions.[15] Speaking about Windows 7 on 16 October 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed compatibility between Vista and Windows 7.[16] Ballmer also confirmed the relationship between Vista and Windows 7, indicating that Windows 7 will be an improved version of Vista.[16]
On 27 December 2008 Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet.[17] According to a performance test by ZDNet,[18] Windows 7 Beta has beaten both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shut down time, working with files and loading documents; others, including PC Pro benchmarks for typical office activities and video-editing, remain identical to Vista and slower than XP.[19] On 7 January 2009, the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) was leaked onto the web.[20]
The official beta, announced at the CES 2009, was made available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers on 7 January 2009[21] and was made briefly available for public download on Microsoft TechNet on 9 January 2009 before being withdrawn and replaced with a coming soon message. The servers were experiencing difficulty in dealing with the number of users who wished to download the beta. Microsoft added additional servers to cope with the large volume of interest from the public.[22] Due to the unexpectedly high demand, Microsoft also decided to remove its initial 2.5 million download limit and make it available to the public until January 24 2009[23], and later until February 10, from where it was no longer available to the public, although paused or deferred downloads of the DVD image files still worked until February 12.[24]
Users can still download Windows 7 via the Microsoft Connect program. According to Neowin, the release candidate is scheduled to be released wordwide on 10 April 2009.[25]
New and changed 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[26][27][28][29], improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.
Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors, a new version of Windows Media Center,[30] a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, 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 ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display.[31] Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer.
The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with pinning applications to the taskbar. Buttons for pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons. These buttons also enable the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks.[32] The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons.
Adjacent to the system clock is a small rectangle button for the new feature Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop.[33] Clicking this button minimizes all windows.
Unlike Windows Vista, window borders, the taskbar and the Sidebar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized when Windows Aero is applied. Instead, they remain transparent.
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),[34] new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages,[35] and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API.[36]
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.[37][38] Microsoft is also investigating better support for Solid State Drives and Windows 7 will be able to identify a Solid State Drive uniquely.[39]
Online versions of Spades, Backgammon and Checkers were removed from Windows Vista, but restored in Windows 7.
Windows 7 will include Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.
 | Wikinews has related news: Windows 7 will allow users to disable Internet Explorer |
Users will also be able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform.[40]
Removed features
While Windows 7 contains many new features, a number of capabilities and certain programs that were a part of Windows Vista are no longer present or have changed, resulting in the removal of certain functionality. The following is a list of features that were present in Windows Vista but have been removed in Windows 7.
- Several shell features[41] including:
- Classic Start menu and Classic Taskbar user interfaces
- Floating Deskbands (was deprecated in Windows Vista, now deskband can be only pinned to taskbar)
- Windows Media Player Mini-player (replaced with the new Jump list feature)
- Pinning default Internet Browser and E-mail client software programs on Start menu by default (programs can be manually pinned)
- The ability to disable grouping (placing next to each other) similar taskbar buttons
- Combined taskbar buttons no longer numerically show how many windows are in their stack.[citation needed]
- The Invert selection menu item has been removed from the Edit menu of Windows Explorer.[citation needed]
- The Taskbar network icon does not show network activity animation.
- Advanced search builder UI.
- Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Mail and Windows Calendar (in favor of downloading or using online the free respective Windows Live counterparts, which lack some features) although the Photo Viewer module of Windows Photo Gallery has been retained.
- Software Explorer feature of Windows Defender[42]
- Removable Storage Manager (RSM)[43] (applications dependent on it, such as NTBackup or the NTBackup Restore Tool, cannot run)
- Windows Meeting Space[citation needed]
- InkBall, a game
- The numeric keypad from On-Screen Keyboard[44]
- Microsoft Agent 2.0 Technology
- Windows Sidebar (replaced with Desktop Gadget Gallery)
- Windows Ultimate Extras in the Ultimate edition
Antitrust regulatory attention
As with other Microsoft operating systems, Windows 7 is being studied by United States federal regulators who oversee the company's operations following the 2001 United States v. Microsoft 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, "[Microsoft's] 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."[45]
It has been noted that in Europe Windows 7 may be required to ship with rival browsers including possibly Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome. The reason for this suspicion is on the inclusion of Internet Explorer which is seen as harming competition.[46] However, Microsoft announced on the Engineering Windows 7 blog that users will be able to turn off many more features than in Windows Vista including Internet Explorer.[40]
Editions
Windows 7 will be released in six editions, although only two of them, the Home Premium and Professional editions, will be most emphasized. The names given to them will be the same as in Windows Vista, except for the Business edition which will become Windows 7 Professional.
Only Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions will be available at retail stores and through most OEMs. Home Basic will be only available to emerging markets, Enterprise only through Volume Licensing and Starter only to selected OEMs.[citation needed] Microsoft has yet to announce the pricing for the editions.
Each successive edition will include all the features of the more basic editions. As a result, upgrading from one edition to another will be simplified and more seamless.[47]
Hardware requirements
Microsoft has published their recommended specifications for a system running Windows 7 beta. Since Windows 7 is similar to Windows Vista, the recommended specifications are much the same as for premium editions of Vista; however, Windows 7 uses less hard disk space.
| Beta Recommended Specs | ||
|---|---|---|
| Processor speed | 1 GHz (either 32-bit or 64-bit) | |
| Memory (RAM) | 1 GB | |
| Graphics card | DirectX 9.0 capable | |
| Graphics memory | 128 MB (for Windows Aero) | |
| HDD free space | 16 GB | |
| Other drives | DVD-ROM | |
| Audio | Audio output | |
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