Windows 7

Windows 7 is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, 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. Windows 7 is succeeded by Windows 8, released on October 26, 2012.

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 on multi-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 Essentials suite.

Features

New and changed features

Windows 7 live thumbnails

The new Action Center, which replaces Windows Security Center in Windows XP and Vista

When the Action Center flag is clicked on, it lists all security and maintenance issues in a small popup window

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, DirectAccess, and kernel improvements. Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version of Windows Media Center, 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 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 32-bit 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 in RAW 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.

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 desktop icon. 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 with Windows Aero applied. Instead, they remain translucent.

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. 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. Support for USB 3.0 is not included due to delays in the finalization of the standard.

The Windows 7 taskbar

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 as Windows 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 and Windows XP Starter Editions, has been removed from Windows 7.

Removed features

Main article: List of features removed in Windows 7

have been changed, resulting in the removal of certain functionalities. These include the classic Start Menu user interface, some taskbar features, Windows Explorer features, Windows Media Player features, Windows Ultimate Extras and InkBall. Four applications bundled with Windows Vista – Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Calendar and Windows Mail – are not included with Windows 7, but applications with close functionality are instead available for free in a separate package called Windows Live Essentials which can be downloaded on the Microsoft website.

Goals

Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that this version of Windows would be more "user-centric". Gates later said that Windows 7 would 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 Vista users migrating to Windows 7 would not find the kind of device compatibility issues they encountered migrating from Windows XP. Speaking about Windows 7 on October 16, 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed compatibility between Windows Vista and Windows 7, indicating that Windows 7 would be a refined version of Windows Vista.

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."

In order to comply with European antitrust regulations, Microsoft has proposed the use of a "ballot" screen, allowing users to download a competing browser, thus removing the need for a version of Windows completely without Internet Explorer, as previously planned. In response to criticism involving Windows 7 E and concerns from manufacturers about possible consumer confusion if a version of Windows 7 with Internet Explorer were shipped later after one without Internet Explorer, Microsoft announced that it would scrap the separate version for Europe and ship the standard upgrade and full packages worldwide.

As with the previous version of Windows, an N version, which does not come with Windows Media Player, has been released in Europe, but only for sale directly from Microsoft sales websites and selected others.

Reception

In July 2009, in only eight hours, pre-orders of Windows 7 at amazon.co.uk surpassed the demand which Windows Vista had had in its first 17 weeks. It became the highest-grossing pre-order in Amazon's history, surpassing sales of the previous record holder, the seventh Harry Potter book. After 36 hours, 64-bit versions of Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate editions sold out in Japan. Two weeks after its release its market share had surpassed that of Snow Leopard, released two months previously as the most recent update to Apple's Mac OS X operating system. According to Net Applications, Windows 7 reached a 4% market share in less than three weeks. (In comparison, it took Windows Vista seven months to reach the same mark.

On March 4, 2010, Microsoft announced that it had sold more than 90 million Windows 7 licenses. By April 23, 2010, Windows 7 had sold more than 100 million copies in six months, which made it Microsoft's fastest-selling operating-system. As of June 23, 2010, Windows 7 has sold 150 million copies which made it the fastest selling operating system in history with seven copies sold every second. Based on worldwide data taken during June 2010 from Windows Update 46% of Windows 7 PCs run the 64-bit edition of Windows 7. According to Stephen Baker of the NPD Group during April 2010 in the United States 77% of PCs sold at retail were pre-installed with the 64-bit edition of Windows 7. As of July 22, 2010, Windows 7 had sold 175 million copies. On October 21, 2010, Microsoft announced that more than 240 million copies of Windows 7 had been sold. Three months later, on January 27, 2011, Microsoft announced total sales of 300 million copies of Windows 7. On July 12, 2011, the sales figure was refined to over 400 million end-user licenses and business installations. As of January 19, 2012, over 525 million copies have been sold.

Reviews of Windows 7 have been mostly positive, noting the increased usability and functionality when compared to its predecessor, Windows Vista. CNET gave Windows 7 Home Premium a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, stating that it "is more than what Vista should have been, [and] it's where Microsoft needed to go". PC Magazine rated it a 4 out of 5 saying that Windows 7 is a "big improvement" over Windows Vista, with fewer compatibility problems, a retooled taskbar, simpler home networking and faster start-up. Maximum PC gave Windows 7 a rating of 9 out of 10 and called Windows 7 a "massive leap forward" in usability and security, and praised the new Taskbar as "worth the price of admission alone". PC World called Windows 7 a "worthy successor" to Windows XP and said that speed benchmarks showed Windows 7 to be slightly faster than Windows Vista. PC World also named Windows 7 one of the best products of the year. In its review of Windows 7, Engadget said that Microsoft had taken a "strong step forward" with Windows 7 and reported that speed is one of Windows 7's major selling points – particularly for the netbook sets. LAPTOP Magazine gave Windows 7 a rating of 4 out of 5 stars and said that Windows 7 makes computing more intuitive, offered better overall performance including a "modest to dramatic" increase in battery life on laptop computers. Techradar gave it a 5 star rating calling it the best version of Windows yet. The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Telegraph also gave Windows 7 favorable reviews.

Some Windows Vista Ultimate users have expressed concerns over Windows 7 pricing and upgrade options. Windows Vista Ultimate users wanting to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 must either pay $219.99 to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate or perform a clean install, which requires them to reinstall all of their programs.

Editions

Windows 7 is available in six different editions, of which the Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate editions are available for retail sale to consumers in most countries. The other editions are not available in retail. The Starter edition is only available preinstalled by OEMs on new PCs, the Enterprise edition only by volume licensing, and Home Basic only to certain developing countries' markets. Each edition of Windows 7 includes all of the capabilities and features of the edition below it. All editions support the IA-32 processor architecture and all editions except Starter support the x86-64 processor architecture. The installation medium is the same for all the consumer editions of Windows 7 that have the same processor architecture, with the license determining the features that are activated; license upgrades permit the subsequent unlocking of features without re-installation of the operating system. This is the first time Microsoft has distributed 2 DVDs (1 DVD for IA-32 processor architecture, the other DVD for x86-64 processor architecture) for each edition of Windows 7 (Except for Starter and Home Basic; some OEM copies have only DVD for IA-32 architecture; the installation DVD of Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit edition is not included but can be obtained from Microsoft.). Users who wish to upgrade to an edition of Windows 7 with more features can then use Windows Anytime Upgrade to purchase the upgrade, and unlock the features of those editions. Some copies of Windows 7 have restrictions, in which it must be distributed, sold, or bought and activated in the geographical region specified in its front cover box.

Microsoft is offering a family pack of Windows 7 Home Premium (in select markets) that allows installation on up to three PCs. The "Family Pack" costs US$149.99 in the United States. On September 18, 2009, Microsoft said they were to offer temporary student discounts for Windows 7. The offer ran in the US and the United Kingdom, with similar schemes available in Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico, France and India. Students with a valid .edu or .ac.uk email address could apply for either Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional, priced at $30 or £30.

Windows 7 is also currently available as an embedded version to developers (previously Windows Embedded 2011).

Hardware requirements

Computers that display this sticker meet the requirements for Windows 7.

Minimum hardware requirements for Windows 7
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)
SATA AHCI support	See below

Additional requirements to use certain features:

• SATA AHCI support was not added to Windows until XP Service Pack 1. As a result, in most motherboards the BIOS default for SATA support is to (emulate) IDE (ATA) rather than use AHCI (SATA). As explained here, this setting needs to be changed before installation, and any chipset-specific AHCI or RAID drivers need to be loaded (from a USB Flash drive, for example) at installation time.
• 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:

Physical memory limits for Windows 7
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, and 1 for Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium.

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. It was available via Windows Update, direct download, or by ordering the Windows 7 SP1 DVD. The service pack is 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.

Platform Update

The Platform Update for Windows 7 SP1 has been released on November 14, 2012. It includes updated DirectX 11.1 runtime libraries and some standalone components that shipped with Windows 8. The Platform Update is also included with Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7.

The Platform Update includes enhancements to the following components: Direct2D, DirectWrite, Direct3D, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) and Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP). In addition, there are updates to the Windows Animation Manager (WAM), XPS Document API, H.264 Video Decoder, and JPEG XR decoder. However support for Direct3D 11.1 is quite limited and the update does not include significant features from Windows 8 which depend on DXGI/WDDM 1.2 and Windows RT APIs.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Windows 7

Windows 7, an Operating System which was the product of Microsoft introduced to overcome the problems of Windows Vista, got released with an excellent set of new features. But still it is not that perfect. On the other hand, most probably, Windows 7 doesn’t have many disadvantages that Vista had. Certainly Windows 7 have more advantages.

Windows7 – Advantages

1.      Windows 7 is faster than its predecessors, both in terms of installation and boot up time.

2.      Calculator has been enhanced with some new features like unit conversion, calculations like fuel economy and auto lease payment.

3.      WordPad in Windows 7 has improved much better and look similar to the Microsoft Office Word. It can be used to open, edit file names with docx extension which was earlier introduced with MS-Office 2007. Word prediction is the new feature in Word Pad. Realistic brush has been added in Paint.

4.      Microsoft facilitates in windows 7, to download some eye-catching themes and background images from its own Microsoft website or from RSS feed. It allows the user to customize every part of the themes and save for our future use or send to the other windows 7 users.

5.      It also supports advanced touch and handwriting recognition.

6.      Windows 7 supports Virtual Hard Disks with the support of enhanced performances of multi core processors.

7.      Windows Media Player 12 has got much enhanced features in the Windows 7 and drag and drop option has been added which were not there in the previous versions.

8.      Windows 7 allows the user to make the best use of graphic cards from the different vendors.

9.      Bitlocker is a feature which provides encryption for the internal drives in vista, but it is extended to the external drives in windows 7. This makes backup and restore much easier.

10.  Default settings of User Account have been eliminated, to protect form the unauthorized software to be installed.

11.  Windows 7 has included a new concept, jumplists which organize the recently used files as well as web pages.

12.  More than that, it also allows the user to overcome the clutter in the desktop by introducing three new features Aero Peek, Aero shake and snap.

13.  Home networking has been made much easier than its previous operating systems and is probably safe from hackers.

Disadvantages of Window7

1.      Some of the users are not satisfied with the new features, because, they need to buy out additional resources such as RAM, etc to make use of them.

2.      It is expensive than the previous Microsoft operating systems.

3.      Some of the users have problems such as; their system hangs after installing Windows 7

4.      If the user has got an HP multifunction printer, and its driver being upgraded to the Windows 7, then the printer doesn’t response to the print commands. So, the user needs to go to the new HP solution Center to resolve this problem.

5.      Windows have specific themes for United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Australia, if the user is not from the above country and he wish to have a specific theme of his country, he will not get that, hence the user will not satisfied with that feature.

6.      Some of the features like Start Menu user interface, Windows Ultimate Extras, InkBall, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Calendar Windows Mail called Windows Live Essentials were included in Vista are removed in Windows 7.

Whatever, the advantages and disadvantages Windows 7 has got, it is still better than its predecessors. One can afford to buy this product and make best use of it.