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Windows Vista contains Hundreds Of New And Reworked Features ; some of the most significant include an updated Graphical User Interface and Visual Style dubbed Windows Aero , improved Searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker , and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network using Peer-to-peer technology, making it easier to share files and digital media between computers and devices. For developers, Vista includes version 3.0 of the .NET Framework , which aims to make it significantly easier for developers to write high-quality applications than with the traditional Windows API . Windows Vista has been the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Criticism Of Windows Vista has included protracted development time, more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new Digital Rights Management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, and the usability of other new features such as User Account Control . DEVELOPMENT See Also: Development of Windows Vista After "Longhorn" was named Windows Vista, an unprecedented Beta-test program was started, involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers and companies. In September 2005, Microsoft started releasing regular Community Technology Preview s (CTP) to beta testers. The first of these was distributed at the 2005 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference , and was subsequently released to beta testers and Microsoft Developer Network subscribers. The builds that followed incorporated most of the planned features for the final product, as well as a number of changes to the user interface, based largely on feedback from beta testers. Windows Vista was deemed feature-complete with the release of the "February CTP", released on February 22 2006 , and much of the remainder of work between that build and the final release of the product focused on stability, performance, application and driver compatibility, and documentation. Beta 2, released in late May, was the first build to be made available to the general public through Microsoft's Customer Preview Program. It was downloaded by over five million people. Two release candidates followed in September and October, both of which were made available to a large number of users. While Microsoft had originally hoped to have the operating system available worldwide in time for Christmas 2006, it was announced in March 2006 that the release date would be pushed back to January 2007, in order to give the company – and the hardware and software companies which Microsoft depends on for providing Device Driver s – additional time to prepare. Through much of 2006, analysts and bloggers had speculated that Windows Vista would be delayed further, owing to anti-trust concerns raised by the European Commission and South Korea, and due to a perceived lack of progress with the beta releases. However, with the November 8 2006 announcement of the completion of Windows Vista, Microsoft's lengthiest operating system development project came to an end. NEW OR IMPROVED FEATURES End-user features has changed since Windows XP.]]
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Talking Windows It features a redesigned user interface and configurable command-and-control commands. Unlike the Office 2003 version, which works only in Office and WordPad, Speech Recognition in Windows Vista works for any accessible application. In addition, it currently supports several languages: British and American English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), and Japanese.
Core technologies See Also: Technical features new to Windows Vista Windows Vista is intended to be a technology-based release, to provide a solid base to include technologies, many of which will be related to how the system functions, and hence not readily visible to the user. An example of this is the restructuring of the architecture of the audio, print, display, and networking subsystems; while the results of this work will be visible to software developers, end-users will only see what appear to be evolutionary changes in the user interface. Vista includes technologies such as ReadyBoost and ''' ReadyDrive ''' which employ fast Flash Memory (located on USB Drive s and Hybrid Hard Disk Drives respectively) to improve system performance by caching commonly-used programs and data. This manifests itself in improved battery life on notebook computers as well, since a hybrid drive can use the Flash memory to cache the data currently in use by the OS and/or other applications, spinning down the disc platters till some fresh data is required. Another new technology called SuperFetch utilizes Machine Learning techniques to analyze usage patterns in order to allow Windows Vista to make decisions about what application and content should be present in system memory at any given time. As part of the redesign of the networking architecture, IPv6 has been incorporated into the operating system, and a number of performance improvements have been introduced, such as TCP Window Scaling . Windows Vista includes more comprehensive support for wireless networking, compared with previous versions of Windows. For graphics, Vista introduces a new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM), as well as major revisions to Direct3D . The new driver model facilitates the new Desktop Window Manager , which provides the Tearing -free desktop and special effects that are the cornerstones of Windows Aero . WDDM's current version 1.0 is able to offload rudimentary tasks to the GPU, install drivers without requiring a system reboot and seamlessly recover from rare driver errors due to illegal application behavior. The next version is going to require an entirely new generation of GPUs, which NVIDIA and ATI are working on. Direct3D 10, developed in conjunction with major display driver manufacturers, is a new architecture with more advanced Shader support, and allows the Graphics Processing Unit to render more complex scenes without assistance from the CPU. It features improved load balancing between CPU and GPU and also optimizes data transfer between them.8 At the core of the operating system, many improvements have been made to the memory manager, process scheduler, heap manager, and I/O scheduler. A Kernel Transaction Manager has been implemented that gives applications the ability to work with the file system and registry using Atomic Transaction operations. Security-related technologies See Also: Security and safety features new to Windows Vista 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. User Account Control is perhaps the most significant and visible of these changes. User Account Control is a security technology that makes it possible for users to use their computer with fewer privileges by default. 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. In Windows Vista, when an action requiring administrative rights is requested, the user will be first prompted for an administrator name and password; in cases where the user is already an administrator, the user is still prompted to confirm the pending privileged action. User Account Control asks for credentials in a Secure Desktop mode, where the entire screen is blacked out, temporarily disabled, and only the authorization window is active and highlighted. The intent is to stop a malicious program 'spoofing' the user interface, attempting to capture admin credentials. ''', 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. 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 Service s 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 haven’t 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. Business technologies See Also: Management features new to Windows Vista While much of the focus of Vista's new capabilities has been on the new user interface, security technologies, and improvements to the core operating system, Microsoft is also adding new deployment and maintenance features.
Business customers who are enrolled in the Microsoft Software Assurance program are offered a set of additional tools and services collectively known as the "Desktop Optimization Pack". This includes the Microsoft SoftGrid application virtualization platform, an asset inventory service, and additional tools for maintaining Group Policy settings in a fashion similar to a Revision Control System . Developer technologies Windows Vista includes a large number of new application programming interfaces. Chief among them is the inclusion of
These technologies will also be available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 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 4.0), new device driver development model (" Windows Driver Foundation "), Transactional NTFS , mobile computing API advancements (power management, Tablet PC Ink support, SideShow ) and major updates to (or complete replacements of) many core subsystems such as Winlogon and CAPI . There are some issues for software developers using some of the graphics APIs in Vista. Games or programs which are built solely on Vista's version of s targeting Windows XP, will disable the Desktop Window Manager , noticeably degrading user experience under Windows Aero. A Vista-compatible ICD takes advantage of a new API, and will be fully compatible with the Desktop Window Manager.12 At least two primary vendors, ATI and NVIDIA , are expected to provide full Vista-compatible ICDs in the near future.13 However, Hardware Overlay is not supported, because it is considered as an obsolete feature in Vista. ATI and NVIDIA strongly recommend using compositing desktop/FBOs for same functionality.14 DEPRECATED FEATURES Some notable Windows XP features and components have been replaced or removed in Windows Vista, including Windows Messenger , the network Messenger Service , HyperTerminal , MSN Explorer , Active Desktop , and the replacement of NetMeeting with Windows Meeting Space . Windows Vista also does not include the Windows XP "Luna" visual theme, or most of the classic color schemes which have been part of Windows since the Windows 3.x era. The "Hardware profiles" startup feature has been removed as well, along with support for older motherboard technologies like the EISA bus, APM and Game Port support. EDITIONS AND PRICING See Also: Windows Vista editions and pricing All editions except Windows Vista Starter support both 32-bit ( X86 ) and 64-bit ( X64 ) processor architectures. In the European Union , Home Basic N and Business N versions will also be available. These versions come without Windows Media Player, due to EU sanctions brought against Microsoft for Violating Anti-trust Laws . Similar sanctions exist in South Korea . VISUAL STYLES ; Windows Vista Standard: This mode is a variation of Windows Aero without the glass effects, window animations, and other advanced graphical effects such as Windows Flip 3D. Like Windows Aero, it uses the Desktop Window Manager, and has generally the same video hardware requirements as Windows Aero. This is the default mode for the Windows Vista Home Basic Edition. The Starter Edition does not support this mode. ; Windows Vista Basic: This mode has aspects that are similar to Windows XP's visual style with the addition of subtle animations such as those found on Progress Bar s. It does not employ the Desktop Window Manager; as such, it does not feature transparency or translucency, window animation, Windows Flip 3D or any of the functions provided by the DWM. The Basic mode does not require the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) for display drivers, and has similar graphics card requirements to Windows XP. For computers with graphics cards that are not powerful enough to support Windows Aero, this is the default graphics mode. ;Windows Classic: An option for corporate deployments and upgrades, Windows Classic has the look and feel of Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, does not use the Desktop Window Manager, and does not require a WDDM driver. As with prior versions of Windows, this visual style supports "color schemes," which are a collection of color settings. Windows Vista includes six classic color schemes, comprised of four high-contrast color schemes and the default color schemes from Windows 98 and Windows 2000 . HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS Windows Vista's "Basic" and "Classic" interfaces will work with virtually any graphics hardware that supports Windows XP or 2000; accordingly, most discussion around Vista's graphics requirements centers on those for the Windows Aero interface. As of Windows Vista Beta 2, the NVIDIA GeForce 6 series and later, the ATI Radeon 9500 and later, Intel's GMA 950 integrated graphics, and a handful of VIA chipsets and S3 Graphics discrete chips are supported. Although originally supported, the GeForce FX 5 series has been dropped from newer drivers from NVIDIA. The last driver from NVIDIA to support the GeForce FX series on Vista was 96.85. {Link without Title} 23 Microsoft offers a tool called the ''Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor''24 to assist 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 32-bit DVD, customers without a DVD-ROM or customers who wish for a 64-bit install media are able to acquire this media through the Windows Vista Alternate Media program.25 SERVICE PACK 1 |
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