Windows 7

Windows 7 is an Operating System created by Microsoft that is apart of the Windows NT Family of Operating Systems. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22 2009 and released to the public on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to its failed predecessor, Windows Vista. it was codenamed Vienna, but was formerly Blackcomb. Mainstream support has ended for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015 and its extended support will end on 2020.

Windows 7 was designed to be an incremental upgrade to Windows Vista to address Vista's failed reception. It improved on elements introduced in Windows Vista like Windows Aero and redesigned it's taskbar. Windows 7 also added features like HomeGroup that allows people to share files with other computers on the network. Microsoft added a Action Center that showed users the general state of the computer like if it had an Antivirus activated. The User Account Control was also tweaked to be less intrusive unlike Vista. Windows 7 shipped with updated versions of Applications like Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player.

Compared to Windows Vista, Windows 7 was generally praised by critics, who considered the operating system to be a major improvement over its predecessor due to its increased performance, its more intuitive interface), fewer User Account Control popups, and other improvements made across the platform. Windows 7 was a major success for Microsoft; even prior to its official release, pre-order sales for 7 on the online retailer Amazon.com had surpassed previous records. In just half a year, over 100 million copies had been sold worldwide, increasing to over 630 million licenses by July 2012. Windows 7 was the most popular Windows variant up to January 2018, when Windows 10 edged it out globally, with a market share of 44.81% for "desktop operating systems." Windows 7 remains popular in most countries, particularly on the continents of Asia and Africa. People still use Windows 7 becaause people like the classic start menu and features like Windows Aero compared to the flat look of Windows Metro that was introduced in Windows 8.

Windows 7's Development

Windows 7 was originally designed to be the successor to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 codenamed Blackcomb. However Blackcomb was delayed because a stopover OS codenamed Longhorn was announed by Microsoft. Loonghorn got some of the features intended for Project Blackcomb by the middle 2003. Blackcomb got further delayed because Microsoft had to design new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 when the Blaster, Nachi, and Sobig viruses exploited flaws in the Windows Operating Systems around August 2003. The development for Longhorn, which released as Windows Vista, got restarted a year later while Blackcomb was renamned to Vienna in early 2006.