Windows Vista

Windows Vista
(Part of the Microsoft Windows family)
Developer
Microsoft
Web site: Official website
Release information
Release date:	RTM: November 8, 2006; Vol. Lic.: November 30, 2006; Retail: January 30, 2007 info
Current version:	6.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) (Build 6002) (6002.18005.090410-1830) ( April 28, 2009 (2009-04-28)) info
Source model:	Closed source / Shared source
License:	MS-EULA
Kernel type:	Hybrid
Support status
Mainstream support

Windows Vista is the 6th version of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Microsoft. When Microsoft was making it, it was called Longhorn. On July 28, 2005, Microsoft gave out its real name, Windows Vista.

Microsoft has worked on Vista for more than five years so there are many things that are new to Windows. It has new features like a thumbnail tab view, so it is possible to see what a program is doing. It includes many small programs which are called gadgets such as a calendar which the user can put events on, and the computer will alert the user when those events are near. The calendar is similar to the Bonzi Buddy program. Some versions of Windows Vista have windows with title bars you can see through, in a new addition called "Windows Aero". It has new things to prevent computer virus attacks and other problems that have been common with Windows. Windows Vista is the first operating system for Microsoft to re-word things to make it a lot more simple.

Microsoft have said that Windows Vista can run older programs but there had been some compatibility problems but a lot of companies had made newer versions of their programs and drivers so that Windows Vista is supported.

Vista Editions and System Requirements

Vista was released in November 2006 for system builders and January 30, 2007 for home users. The four main editions of Windows Vista are:

• Home Basic Edition
• Home Premium Edition
• Business Edition
• Ultimate Edition.

There are 2 special versions called Home Starter Edition, and Enterprise Edition. Home Starter is basically the same as XP Starter, and is for low budget countries. Vista needs at least 512 MB of RAM to run on all computers. Some new parts of Vista need 1 GB of RAM to work.

Windows Vista system requirements

	Vista Basic	Vista Premium Ready
Processor	800 MHz	1.0 GHz
Memory	512 MB RAM	1 GB RAM
Graphics card	DirectX 9 capable	DirectX 9 capable GPU with Hardware Pixel Shader v2.0 and WDDM 1.0 driver support
Graphics memory	N/A	128 MB RAM supports up to 2,756,000 total pixels (e.g. 1920 × 1200) or 512 MB+ for greater resolutions such as 2560x1600
HDD capacity	20 GB	40 GB
HDD free space	15 GB	15 GB
Other drives	DVD-ROM	DVD-ROM

For stability and performance, more than 1 Gigabyte of main memory (RAM) is always helpful with a large operating system such as this.

Service Packs

Microsoft releases service packs to update software and fix problems.

Service pack 1

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was released on February 4, 2008 alongside Windows Server 2008 to OEM partners, after a five-month beta test period. The first use 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 same release date of the two operating systems showed the merging of the workstation and server kernels back into a single code base for the first time since Windows 2000. MSDN subscribers were able to download SP1 on February 15, 2008. SP1 became available to current Windows Vista users on Windows Update and the Download Center on March 18, 2008. 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, 2008.

Service Pack 2

Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista was released to manufacturing on April 28, 2009,and released to Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update on May 26, 2009. In addition to a number of security and other fixes, a number of new features have been added. However, it did not include Internet Explorer 8.

Other websites

Find more information on Windows Vista by searching one of Wikipedia's sister projects:

Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Quotations from Wikiquote
Source texts from Wikisource
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News stories from Wikinews

Microsoft

• Microsoft Windows Vista — Microsoft Windows Vista homepage
• Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade Info — Windows Vista Upgrade planning
• Microsoft Windows Vista Product Guide — Contains complete, feature-by-feature comparisons of the various Windows Vista editions (current through the Beta 2 release)
• Microsoft Windows Vista Hardware Design — Hardware Design for Windows Vista — News for Driver Developers and Hardware Engineers
• Microsoft Technet — Windows Vista: Resources for IT Professionals
• MSDN — Windows Vista Developer Center on MSDN
• The Windows Vista Blog — Official blog of the Windows Vista Team

Reviews and screenshots

• Windows Vista Screenshots Gallery — Collection of Vista Screenshots from Different Builds
• Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows — Windows Vista Activity Center
• Features of Windows Vista
• Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit Performance Compared
• Windows Vista Ultimate — CNET review
• Windows XP vs. Vista: The Benchmark Rundown — Tom's Hardware Guide review

Preceded by Windows XP

Windows Versions 2007-

Succeeded by Windows 7