Release date for windows vista

Windows Touch allow users with touchscreen devices to use the functionality for web browsing, picture viewing, file navigation etc. Windows 8 was released in and included the biggest change to the Windows interface to date, which many argued was best suited to touchscreen users. A particularly appreciated version of Windows 8 was its lock screen. As well as the date and time, the lock screen displayed additional little nuggets of information such as how many emails users had.

Gone was the start button, instead, the start screen operated as a full view of apps and programs and the live element allowed tiles to display live information from Apps; search was still available and required users to merely start typing to take advantage of this feature when in the Start screen.

Many users found this feature frustrating, stating that it was not as user friendly or convenient. Windows 8 also boosted some full screen apps with were very touch friendly, others that were not compatible for full screen were displayed in the desktop mode. Running apps side by side, thereby encouraging and complimenting multitasking was an exciting and much appreciated feature certainly by those of us that spend our days multitasking! Microsoft listened to users who wanted to start their device to a more familiar screen, and one of the biggest noted changes was the ability to be able to power up straight to the desktop start menu, as opposed to the live tiles start page.

A snazzy new feature from Windows 8. An example of an action preformed through search hero is media based; searching for a destination would bring up a map, current weather and a list of attractions for the specified region.

When available through developer allowance, Windows 8. Windows 8. The launch of Windows 10 assured Windows users around the world that Microsoft heard its follows and took note of the argument that Windows 8 was for touchscreen users; a smooth, more intuitive operating system has been designed, that includes elements of the Windows 8 interface namely live tiles next to more traditional elements including drum roll please the start bar!!

It is back in all its glory! Receive our latest technology news and updates straight to your inbox once a month. For the first time in Windows, graphics processing unit GPU multitasking is possible, enabling users to run more than one GPU-intensive application simultaneously. The Heap Manager implements additional features such as integrity checking in order to improve robustness and defend against buffer overflow security exploits, although this comes at the price of breaking backward compatibility with some legacy applications.

A Kernel Transaction Manager has been implemented that enables applications to work with the file system and Registry using atomic transaction operations. Improved security was a primary design goal for Vista. Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, which aims to improve public trust in its products, has had a direct effect on its development.

This effort has resulted in a number of new security and safety features. UAC is a security technology that makes it possible for users to use their computer with fewer privileges by default, with a view to stopping malware from making unauthorized changes to the system. This was often difficult in previous versions of Windows, as the previous "limited" user accounts proved too restrictive and incompatible with a large proportion of application software, and even prevented some basic operations such as looking at the calendar from the notification tray.

Regular use of the computer such as running programs, printing, or surfing the Internet does not trigger UAC prompts. User Account Control asks for credentials in a Secure Desktop mode, in which the entire screen is dimmed, and only the authorization window is active and highlighted.

The intent is to stop a malicious program misleading the user by interfering with the authorization window, and to hint to the user the importance of the prompt. Symantec used over 2, active malware samples, consisting of backdoors, keyloggers , rootkits, mass mailers, trojan horses, spyware, adware, and various other samples.

Each was executed on a default Windows Vista installation within a standard user account. UAC effectively blocked over 50 percent of each threat, excluding rootkits.

Internet Explorer 7 's new security and safety features include a phishing filter, IDN with anti-spoofing capabilities, and integration with system-wide parental controls.

For added security, ActiveX controls are disabled by default. Also, Internet Explorer operates in a protected mode, which operates with lower permissions than the user and runs in isolation from other applications in the operating system, preventing it from accessing or modifying anything besides the Temporary Internet Files directory.

Microsoft's anti-spyware product, Windows Defender , has been incorporated into Windows, providing protection against malware and other threats. Changes to various system configuration settings such as new auto-starting applications are blocked unless the user gives consent. Whereas prior releases of Windows supported per-file encryption using Encrypting File System , the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Vista include BitLocker Drive Encryption which can protect entire volumes, notably the operating system volume.

However, BitLocker requires approximately a 1. In normal circumstances, the only time this partition is accessed is when the computer is booting, or when there is a Windows update that changes files in this area which is a legitimate reason to access this section of the drive. The area can be a potential security issue, because a hexadecimal editor such as dskprobe.

However, as with other full disk encryption technologies, BitLocker is vulnerable to a cold boot attack, especially where TPM is used as a key protector without a boot PIN being required too. A variety of other privilege-restriction techniques are also built into Vista. An example is the concept of "integrity levels" in user processes, whereby a process with a lower integrity level cannot interact with processes of a higher integrity level and cannot perform DLL—injection to a processes of a higher integrity level.

The security restrictions of Windows services are more fine-grained, so that services especially those listening on the network have no ability to interact with parts of the operating system they do not need to.

Obfuscation techniques such as address space layout randomization are used to increase the amount of effort required of malware before successful infiltration of a system. Code Integrity verifies that system binaries have not been tampered with by malicious code. As part of the redesign of the network stack, Windows Firewall has been upgraded, with new support for filtering both incoming and outgoing traffic. Advanced packet filter rules can be created which can grant or deny communications to specific services.

The bit versions of Vista require that all device drivers be digitally signed, so that the creator of the driver can be identified. While much of the focus of Vista's new capabilities has highlighted the new user-interface, security technologies, and improvements to the core operating system, Microsoft also adding new deployment and maintenance features:.

Windows Vista includes a large number of new application programming interfaces. Chief among them is the inclusion of version 3. Version 3. These technologies are also available for Windows XP and Windows Server to facilitate their introduction to and usage by developers and end users.

There are also significant new development APIs in the core of the operating system, notably the completely re-architected audio, networking, print, and video interfaces, major changes to the security infrastructure, improvements to the deployment and installation of applications "ClickOnce" and Windows Installer 4. There are some issues for software developers using some of the graphics APIs in Vista. Games or programs which are built solely on the Windows Vista-exclusive version of DirectX , version 10, cannot work on prior versions of Windows, as DirectX 10 is not available for previous Windows versions.

Also, games which require the features of D3D9Ex, the updated implementation of DirectX 9 in Windows Vista are also incompatible with previous Windows versions. However, hardware overlay is not supported, because it is considered as an obsolete feature in Vista. The "Hardware profiles" startup feature has also been removed, along with support for older motherboard technologies like the EISA bus, APM and Game port support though on the bit version game port support can be enabled by applying an older driver.

Windows Vista does not include the " Luna " visual theme, created in for Windows XP, or most of the classic color schemes which have been part of Windows since the Windows 3. Also the caption buttons are changed. Only Windows Classic can still be found in that operating system. Windows Vista ships in six different editions. These are roughly divided into two target markets, consumer and business, with editions varying to cater for specific sub-markets.

For consumers, there are four editions, with three available for economically more developed countries. Windows Vista Home Basic is intended for budget users and is available only in emerging markets. Windows Vista Home Premium covers the majority of the consumer market, and contains applications for creating and using multimedia. The home editions cannot join a Windows Server domain. For businesses, there are three editions. Windows Vista Business is specifically designed for small and medium enterprises small and medium-sized businesses, is only available to customers participating in Microsoft's Microsoft Software Assurance Software Assurance program.

Windows Vista Ultimate contains the complete feature-set of both the Home and Business combination of both Home Premium and Enterprise editions, as well as a set of Windows Ultimate Extras , and is aimed at enthusiasts. All editions except Windows Vista Starter support both bit x86 and bit x64 processor architectures.

Similar sanctions exist in South Korea. A Vista Capable or equivalent PC is capable of running all editions of Windows Vista although some of the special features and high-end graphics options may require additional or more advanced hardware. Windows Vista's Basic and Classic interfaces work with virtually any graphics hardware that supports Windows XP or ; accordingly, most discussion around Vista's graphics requirements centers on those for the Windows Aero interface.

Microsoft offers a tool called the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to assist Windows XP and Vista users in determining what versions of Windows their machine is capable of running.

Although the installation media included in retail packages is a bit DVD, customers needing a CD-ROM or customers who wish for a bit install media are able to acquire this media through the Windows Vista Alternate Media program. The Ultimate edition includes both bit and bit media. The digitally downloaded version of Ultimate includes only one version, either bit or bit, from Windows Marketplace.

Maximum limits on physical memory RAM that Windows Vista can address vary depending on the both the Windows version and between bit and bit versions.

The following table specifies the maximum physical memory limits supported:. The total maximum number of logical processors of a PC that Windows Vista supports is: 32 for bit; 64 for bit. Microsoft occasionally releases service packs for its Windows operating systems to fix bugs and add new features. The initial deployment of the service pack caused a number of machines to continually reboot, rendering the machines unusable.

This caused Microsoft to temporarily suspend automatic deployment of the service pack until the problem was resolved. The synchronized release date of the two operating systems reflected the merging of the workstation and server kernels back into a single code base for the first time since Windows Initially, the service pack only supported 5 languages — English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese.

Support for the remaining 31 languages was released on April 14, A whitepaper published by Microsoft near the end of August outlined the scope and intent of the service pack, identifying three major areas of improvement: reliability and performance, administration experience, and support for newer hardware and standards.

One area of particular note is performance. Areas of improvement include file copy operations, hibernation, logging off on domain-joined machines, JavaScript parsing in Internet Explorer, network file share browsing, Windows Explorer ZIP file handling, and Windows Disk Defragmenter. The ability to choose individual drives to defragment is being reintroduced as well. Service Pack 1 introduced support for some new hardware and software standards, notably the exFAT file system, Booting a system using Extensible Firmware Interface on x64 systems was also introduced; this feature had originally been slated for the initial release of Vista but was delayed due to a lack of compatible hardware at the time.

Two areas have seen changes in SP1 that have come as the result of concerns from software vendors. One of these is desktop search; users will be able to change the default desktop search program to one provided by a third party instead of the Microsoft desktop search program that comes with Windows Vista, and desktop search programs will be able to seamlessly tie in their services into the operating system.

These changes come in part due to complaints from Google , whose Google Desktop Search application was hindered by the presence of Vista's built-in desktop search.

In June , Google claimed that the changes being introduced for SP1 "are a step in the right direction, but they should be improved further to give consumers greater access to alternate desktop search providers". The other area of note is a set of new security APIs being introduced for the benefit of antivirus software that currently relies on the unsupported practice of patching the kernel see Kernel Patch Protection.

An update to DirectX 10 , named DirectX Graphics cards will be required to support DirectX SP1 includes a kernel An updated downloadable version of the Group Policy Management Console was released soon after the service pack.

SP1 enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime. It works by allowing Windows components to be updated or "patched" while they are still in use by a running process. Hotpatch-enabled update packages are installed via the same methods as traditional update packages, and will not trigger a system reboot. In addition to a number of security and other fixes, a number of new features have been added.

Windows Vista and Windows Server share a single service pack binary, reflecting the fact that their code bases were joined with the release of Server Service Pack 2 is not a cumulative update meaning that Service Pack 1 must be installed first.

It includes major new components that shipped with Windows 7 , as well as updated runtime libraries. It consists of the following components:. Although extensive, the Platform Update does not bring Windows Vista to the level of features and performance offered by Windows 7. In July , Microsoft introduced a web-based advertising campaign called the "Mojave Experiment", that depicts a group of people who are asked to evaluate the newest operating system from Microsoft, calling it Windows 'Mojave'.

Participants are first asked about Vista, if they have used it, and their overall satisfaction with Vista on a scale of 1 to They are then shown a demo of some of the new operating system's features, and asked their opinion and satisfaction with it on the same 1 to 10 scale.

After respondents rate "Mojave", they are then told that they were really shown a demo of Windows Vista. The object was to test "A theory: If people could see Windows Vista firsthand, they would like it. The "experiment" has been criticized for deliberate selection of positive statements and not addressing all aspects of Vista. A Gartner research report predicted that Vista business adoption in would overtake that of XP during the same time frame As of January , Forrester Research had indicated that almost one third of North American and European corporations had started deploying Vista.

At a May conference, a Microsoft Vice President said "Adoption and deployment of Windows Vista has been slightly ahead of where we had been with XP" for big businesses. In its first year of availability, PC World rated it as the biggest tech disappointment of , and it was rated by InfoWorld as 2 of Tech's all-time 25 flops. The internet-usage market share for Windows Vista after two years of availability, in January , was