Commemorating the 5th Anniversary of Microsoft Windows Vista System Release

Now, with its excellent user experience, leading innovation and fast execution efficiency, Windows 7 has surpassed Windows XP and other operating systems and become the largest operating system in the market. However, behind the scenery, who can remember Windows Vista?

Five years ago, Microsoft officially released Windows Vista for individual users. This epoch-making operating system, which cost tens of billions of dollars and invested 10,000 engineers and has been developed over five years, contains many innovative features and contains a lot of innovative technologies, which have a profound impact on the future.

I. Birth

Some employees at Microsoft like to ski. Whistler and Blackcomb are two large ski resorts in British Columbia, Canada, and Longhorn is just a bar between the two mountains.

Just before Windows XP (Whistler) officially completed, Microsoft announced that it will begin development plans for the next-generation operating system, Blackcomb, and will release a transitional version of Longhorn around 2003.

In WinHEC 2002, Microsoft announced that it will include new programming interfaces, graphics architecture, networking technologies and storage technologies. Obviously, its positioning has undergone major changes —— Important version.

Since then, there have been some unfortunately leaked versions of Longhorn on the web, including the first innovations or features such as WinFS, Avalon, Indigo, Desktop Window Manager, and Windows Sidebar.

At the same time, because Windows XP often has security vulnerabilities and is vulnerable to malware, computer viruses, cache overflows, etc., Microsoft proposed the concept of "trusted computing", requiring the whole company to work hard. Work together to solve security problems.

Microsoft hopes to prioritize the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, so Microsoft has invested in some research and development efforts to develop Windows XP SP2. It was finally launched in August 2004 and includes an enhanced version of the firewall, Internet Explorer 6, and new features such as data execution protection, Windows Security Center, Bluetooth technology and improved Wi-Fi support. This has caused Longhorn's development plan to be delayed.

New resource managers, new installation interfaces, download managers, virtual folders (libraries) and more are on the Longhorn. With the addition of WinFS, Microsoft hopes to rewrite various system components and office products Office with new data storage technology.

In May 2003, WinHEC 2003 was held, and Microsoft announced some details of Longhorn. Among them, the Aero interface is a highlight, it is a newly designed user interface, including Windows Aero (matte glass appearance), Windows Flip 3D, real-time thumbnails, new fonts and so on.

As more and more technologies or features are added to Longhorn, the development plan has become elusive and the development team has lost its way.

Jim ·, vice president of Microsoft and Windows development at the time; Alchin also hopes that the company can restart the development process as soon as possible, because developers can integrate various features into the system kernel at will. Among them, and the lack of a clear goal for the final product, Longhorn's development has been "completely finished".

At WinHEC 2004, Microsoft released Longhorn Build 4074, the last publicly released Longhorn Build before the restart, offering a new set of system icons (Windows Aero) and a new set of system fonts ( Segoe UI).

Microsoft later announced that Avalon and Indigo will be integrated into WinFX (later .NET Framework 3.0, the next generation of programming interfaces) and support Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. WinFS is removed and placed separately afterwards. Unfortunately, it only announced a stoppage after releasing a beta version.

In August 2004, Jim · Alchin sent an email to employees announcing the restart of the development process. The code base will be based on Windows Server 2003 SP1, not Windows XP. At the same time, he also carried out reforms drastically, and strived to make the development plan complete faster.

Subsequently, Microsoft revealed information about DirectX 10, the Windows Experience Index, and internally tested various Longhorn independent versions, such as Starter, Home, Business, Ultimate, and so on.

At WinHEC 2005, Microsoft released the Longhorn Build 5048, which for the first time uses the Windows Aero interface. However, due to the significant reduction in functionality compared to the previous version, many people do not recognize it. Some people think that this is a retrogression.

In July 2005, Microsoft announced the official name of Longhorn, Vista. The word Vista comes from the Latin Vedere, which has the meaning of “Vision” and “Looking forward”, which is in line with its slogan “to bring clarity to your world”. Jim · Alchin is also excited to say: "Vista outlines a beautiful picture of the function of this new system, which can maximize people's imagination and ignite the passion of users. & rdquo;

Beta features, Vista's features gradually become clear, the new version of the resource manager, index-based search, parental control, WinFX, sidebar, new media center, new version of Media Player, the new version of Windows Movie Maker , Windows Defender, Windows Mail (Outlook Express), Windows Calendar, Windows Photo Gallery, New Internet Explorer, Performance Tuning Tool, XML Paper Specification (XPS), Enhanced Speech Recognition, Windows Aero, Game Management Center, DirectX 10, ReadyBoost Hundreds of exciting new features such as BitLocker and User Account Control have been added.

During the RC phase, Microsoft made many improvements to Vista based on various feedback from testers, and eliminated many bugs. The response was enthusiastic.

Microsoft announced on November 8, 2006 that the Vista development plan was officially completed.

Second, redemption

Microsoft has high hopes that Windows Vista will not be able to quickly occupy the market as Microsoft wants. Due to its high hardware requirements, high memory footprint, poor backward compatibility and other issues, it was rated as “flashy”. At the same time, user account control originally designed to improve security is also criticized. For a time, its reputation fell to the bottom, and even sneered by competitors.

In order to enhance the stability and compatibility of the system, Microsoft released Windows Vista SP1 in January 2008. Although various problems have been greatly improved in this version, but its negative image has long been deeply rooted in people's hearts, has been unable to return to heaven.

In 2008, Microsoft conducted an interesting experiment called "Mojave Experiment". In the experiment, Microsoft showed testers a next-generation operating system code-named "Mojave" and asked them to compare this with Windows Vista. Unexpectedly, the testers are extremely acclaimed for Mojave, while Windows Vista is not recognized. Who knows that Mojave is Windows Vista.

Perhaps this is why Windows 7 can be quickly spread because it is not too big. Many times users' perceptions of Windows Vista are artificially distorted and artificially affected. For example, the memory usage problem that is criticized is actually a misunderstanding of SuperFetch and other memory management technologies.

In April 2009, Microsoft released Windows Vista SP2, which not only fixed some vulnerabilities, but also added some new features to improve Windows Vista.

Later, Microsoft relied on the release of Windows 7 to wipe out the company's image and emerge from the shadow of failure.

Third, meaning

Although Windows Vista did not have a large-scale popularity in the end, it has made great contributions to various products of Microsoft in the future, such as the popular operating system Windows 7, namely Develop on top of it; as SQL Server 2008, it incorporates some of the features of WinFS.

Windows Vista is Microsoft's first operating system with both 64-bit and 32-bit support; it is the first operating system that only supports installation on NTFS partitions; it is the first to highly value the user experience. Operating system...

Now that it has been officially released for 5 years, it is time to enter the History Museum. However, we should not forget its great contribution to us, to businesses, and to Microsoft. It is a huge revolution in the history of personal operating systems.