Windows 7 is the latest release of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating systemsproduced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and businessdesktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs, and media center PCs. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and reached general retail availability worldwide on October 22, 2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time.
Unlike Windows Vista, which introduced a large number of new features, Windows 7 was intended to be a more focused, incremental upgrade to the Windows line, with the goal of being compatible with applications and hardware with which Windows Vista was already compatible.Presentations given by Microsoft in 2008 focused onmulti-touch support, a redesigned Windows shell with a new taskbar, referred to as the Superbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements.
Some standard applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, including Windows Calendar, Windows Mail,Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are not included in Windows 7; most are instead offered separately at no charge as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.
Features
New and changed features
Main article: Features new to Windows 7
The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch toolbar has been replaced with the ability to pin 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. The revamped taskbar also allows the reordering of taskbar buttons. To the far right of the system clock is a small rectangular button that serves as the Show desktopicon. This button is part of the new feature in Windows 7 called Aero Peek. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop. In touch-enabled displays such as touch screens, tablet PCs, etc., this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a finger. Clicking this button minimizes all windows, and clicking it a second time restores them. Additionally, there is a feature named Aero Snap, that automatically maximizes a window when it is dragged to the top of the screen. Dragging windows to the left/right edges of the screen allows users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen for comparison between windows, such that the windows vertically take up half the screen. When a user moves windows that were maximized using Aero Snap, the system restores their previous state automatically. This functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Unlike in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized withWindows Aero applied. Instead, they remain translucent.Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch andhandwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, DirectAccess, and kernelimprovements. Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version ofWindows Media Center,a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, theXPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion for length, weight, temperature, and several others. 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.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. Readyboost on 32bit editions now supports up to 256 gigabytes of extra allocation. The default setting for User Account Control in Windows 7 has been criticized for allowing untrusted software to be launched with elevated privileges without a prompt by exploiting a trusted application.Microsoft's Windows kernel engineer Mark Russinovich acknowledged the problem, but noted that malware can also compromise a system when users agree to a prompt.Windows 7 also supports images inRAW image format through the addition of Windows Imaging Component-enabled image decoders, which enables raw image thumbnails, previewing and metadata display in Windows Explorer, plus full-size viewing and slideshows in Windows Photo Viewer and Windows Media Center.
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 HDMI1.3 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. Microsoft has also implemented better support for solid-state drives,including the new TRIM command, and Windows 7 is able to identify a solid-state drive uniquely. Microsoft is planning to support USB 3.0 in a subsequent patch, support not being included in the initial release due to delays in the finalization of the standard.
Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7. Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.
Users are also able to disable many more Windows components than was possible in Windows Vista. New additions to this list of components include Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, and the Windows Gadget Platform. Windows 7 includes 13 additional sound schemes, titled Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savanna, and Sonata. A new version of Microsoft Virtual PC, newly renamed asWindows Virtual PC was made available for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. It allows multiple Windows environments, including Windows XP Mode, to run on the same machine. Windows XP Mode runs Windows XP in a virtual machine and redirects displayed applications running in Windows XP to the Windows 7 desktop. Furthermore, Windows 7 supports the mounting of a virtual hard disk (VHD) as a normal data storage, and the bootloader delivered with Windows 7 can boot the Windows system from a VHD; however, this ability is only available in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.The Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) of Windows 7 is also enhanced to support real-time multimedia application including video playback and 3D games, thus allowing use of DirectX 10 in remote desktop environments. The three application limit, previously present in the Windows Vista Starter Edition, has been removed from Windows 7.
Development
Main article: Development of Windows 7
Originally, a version of Windows codenamed Blackcomb was planned as the successor to Windows XP (codename Whistler) 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. However, an interim, minor release, codenamed "Longhorn," was announced for 2003, delaying the development of Blackcomb.] 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 while developing new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Development of Longhorn (Windows Vista) was also restarted, and thus delayed, in August 2004. A number of features were cut from Longhorn.
Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006 and again renamed Windows 7 in 2007. In 2008, it was announced that Windows 7would also be the official name of the operating system. There has been some confusion over naming the product Windows 7, while versioning it as 6.1 to indicate its similar build to Vista and increase compatibility with applications that only check major version numbers,similar to Windows 2000 and Windows XP both having 5.x version numbers.
The first external release to select Microsoft partners came in January 2008 with Milestone 1, build 6519. At PDC 2008, Microsoft demonstrated Windows 7 with its reworked taskbar. Copies of Windows 7 build 6801 were distributed at the end of the conference; however, the demonstrated taskbar was disabled in this build.
On December 27, 2008, the Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet via BitTorrent.According to a performance test by ZDNet,Windows 7 Beta beat both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas; including boot and shutdown time and working with files, such as loading documents. Other areas did not beat XP; including PC Pro benchmarks for typical office activities and video editing, which remain identical to Vista and slower than XP.On January 7, 2009, the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 Beta (build 7000) was leaked onto the web, with some torrents being infected with a trojan. At CES 2009, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the Windows 7 Beta, build 7000, had been made available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers in the format of an ISO image.The Beta was to be publicly released January 9, 2009, and Microsoft initially planned for the download to be made available to 2.5 million people on this date. However, access to the downloads was delayed because of high traffic. The download limit was also extended, initially until January 24, then again to February 10. People who did not complete downloading the beta had two extra days to complete the download. After February 12, unfinished downloads became unable to complete. Users could still obtain product keys from Microsoft to activate their copies of Windows 7 Beta, which expired on August 1, 2009.
The release candidate, build 7100, became available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers and Connect Program participants on April 30, 2009. On May 5, 2009 it became available to the general public, although it had also been leaked onto the Internet via BitTorrent.The release candidate was available in five languages and expired on June 1, 2010, with shutdowns every two hours starting March 1, 2010. Microsoft stated that Windows 7 would be released to the general public on October 22, 2009. Microsoft released Windows 7 to MSDN and Technet subscribers on August 6, 2009, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. Microsoft announced that Windows 7, along with Windows Server 2008 R2, was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009. Windows 7 RTM is build 7600.16385.090713-1255, which was compiled on July 13, 2009, and was declared the final RTM build after passing all Microsoft's tests internally.
An estimated 1000 developers worked on Windows 7. These were broadly divided into "core operating system" and "Windows client experience", in turn organized into 25 teams of around 40 developers on average.
Hardware requirements
Microsoft has published the minimum specifications for a system to run Windows 7. Requirements for the 32-bit version are similar to that of premium editions of Vista, but are higher for 64-bit versions. Microsoft has released an upgrade advisor that determines if a computer is compatible with Windows 7. Although the Nvidia GeForce FX (5xxx) series graphics cards meet the minimum hardware requirement, nVidia has decided not to produce Windows 7 compatible drivers for anything below the GeForce 6 Series.
| Architecture | 32-bit | 64-bit |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | 1 GHz IA-32 processor | 1 GHz x86-64 processor |
| Memory (RAM) | 1 GB | 2 GB |
| Graphics card | DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM driver model 1.0 (Not absolutely necessary; only required for Aero) | |
| HDD free space | 16 GB of free disk space | 20 GB of free disk space |
| Optical drive | DVD-ROM drive (Only to install from DVD-ROM media) | |
Additional requirements to use certain features:]
- Windows XP Mode (Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise): Requires an additional 1 GB of RAM and additional 15 GB of available hard disk space. The requirement for a processor capable of hardware virtualization has been lifted.
- Windows Media Center (included in Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise), requires a TV tuner to receive and record TV.
Physical memory limits
Maximum limits on physical memory (RAM) that Windows 7 can address vary depending on both the Windows version and between 32-bit and 64-bit versions.The following table specifies the maximum physical memory limits supported:
| Version | Limit in 32-bit Windows | Limit in 64-bit Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 7 Ultimate | 4 GB | 192 GB |
| Windows 7 Enterprise | ||
| Windows 7 Professional | ||
| Windows 7 Home Premium | 16 GB | |
| Windows 7 Home Basic | 8 GB | |
| Windows 7 Starter | 2 GB | N/A |
Processor limits
The maximum total number of logical processors in a PC that Windows 7 supports is: 32 for 32-bit, 256 for 64-bit.
The maximum number of physical processors in a PC that Windows 7 supports is: 2 for Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate; 1 for Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium.
Service packs
Service Pack 1
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) was announced on March 18, 2010. A beta was released on July 12, 2010.The final version was released to the public on February 9, 2011.At the time of release, it was not made mandatory. Technet has information on blocking it; or getting it via Windows Update, direct download, or by ordering the Windows 7 SP1 DVD. Microsoft confirmed that the service pack is to be on a much smaller scale than those released for previous versions of Windows, particularly Windows Vista.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 adds support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), a 256-bit instruction set extension for processors, and improves IKEv2 by adding additional identification fields such as E-mail ID to it. In addition, it adds support for Advanced Format 512e as well as additional Identity Federation Services.Windows 7 Service Pack 1 also resolves a bug related to HDMI audio and another related to printing XPS documents.
Some programs have compatibility issues with SP1 and a limited number of programs may experience a loss of functionality.
Source : Wikipedia
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