WINDOWS 7

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.

In 2000, Microsoft started the planning to follow up Windows XP and its server counterpart Windows Server 2003 (both codenamed Whistler) with a major new release of Windows that was codenamed Blackcomb (both codenames refer to the Whistler-Blackcomb resort). This new version was at that time scheduled for a 2005 release.[6][7]

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. In this context, a feature mentioned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for Blackcomb was "a pervasive typing line that will recognize the sentence that [the user is] typing in."[8]

Later, Blackcomb was delayed and an interim, minor release, codenamed "Longhorn", was announced for a 2003 release.[9] By the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb, including WinFS, the Desktop Window Manager, and new versions of system components built on the .NET Framework. After the 2003 "Summer of Worms", where three major viruses − Blaster, Sobig, and Welchia − exploited flaws in Windows operating systems within a short time period, 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.