Apa Itu Windows 7

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Windows 7
Part of the Microsoft Windows family

Windows 7 (formerly codenamed Blackcomb and Vienna) is the latest version of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs and media center PCs.
Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, with general retail availability set for October 22, 2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, is slated for release at about the same time.

Development of Windows 7

At PDC 2008, Microsoft demonstrated Windows 7 with its reworked taskbar. Copies of Windows 7 build 6801 were distributed out at the end of the conference, but the demonstrated taskbar was disabled in this build.
On December 27, 2008, Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet via BitTorrent. According to a performance test by ZDNet, Windows 7 Beta beat both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shut down time, working with files such as loading documents; other areas did not beat XP, including PC Pro benchmarks for typical office activities and video-editing, remain identical to Vista and slower than XP.

The release candidate is available in five languages and will expire on June 1, 2010, with shutdowns every two hours starting March 1, 2010. Microsoft has stated that Windows 7 will be released to the general public on October 22, 2009. Microsoft released Windows 7 to MSDN and Technet subscribers on August 6, 2009 at 10:00am PDT. Microsoft announced that Windows 7, along with Windows Server 2008 R2 were released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009. Windows 7 RTM is build 7600.16385 which was compiled on July 13, 2009, and was declared the final RTM build after passing all Microsoft's tests internally.

Goals
Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that the next version of Windows would "be more user-centric". Gates later said that Windows 7 will also focus on performance improvements. Steven Sinofsky later expanded on this point, explaining in the Engineering Windows 7 blog that the company was using a variety of new tracing tools to measure the performance of many areas of the operating system on an ongoing basis, to help locate inefficient code paths and to help prevent performance regressions.
Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows Vista users migrating to Windows 7 would not find the kind of device compatibility issues they encountered migrating from Windows XP. Speaking about Windows 7 on October 16, 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed compatibility between Vista and Windows 7, indicating that Windows 7 will be a refined version of Windows Vista.

Features
New and changed features

The new Action Center which replaces Windows Security Center.
Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch and handwritin recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, DirectAccess, and kernel improvements. Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors (Heterogeneous Multi-adapter), a new version of Windows Media Center, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and Windows PowerShell being included, and a redesigned Calculator with multiline capabilities including Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion. Many new items have been added to the Control Panel, including ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display. Windows Security Center has been renamed to Windows Action Center (Windows Health Center and Windows Solution Center in earlier builds) which encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer. The default setting for User Account Control in Windows 7 has been criticized for allowing untrusted software to be launched with elevated privileges by exploiting a trusted application. Microsoft's Windows kernel engineer Mark Russinovich acknowledged the problem, but noted that there are other vulnerabilities that do not rely on the new setting.

The Windows 7 taskbar, with the Desktop Window Manager disabled.
For developers, Windows 7 includes a new networking API with support for building SOAP-based web services in native code (as opposed to .NET based WCF web services), new features to shorten application install times, reduced UAC prompts, simplified development of installation packages, and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API. At WinHEC 2008 Microsoft announced that color depths of 30-bit and 48-bit would be supported in Windows 7 along with the wide color gamut scRGB (which for HDMI 1.3 can be converted and output as xvYCC). The video modes supported in Windows 7 are 16-bit sRGB, 24-bit sRGB, 30-bit sRGB, 30-bit with extended color gamut sRGB, and 48-bit scRGB. Microsoft is also implementing better support for Solid State Drives, including the new TRIM command, and Windows 7 will be able to identify a Solid State Drive uniquely.
Internet Spades, Internet Backgammon and Internet Checkers, which were removed from Windows Vista, were restored in Windows 7. Windows 7 will include Internet Explorer 8 and Windows Media Player 12.

Removed features
A number of capabilities and certain programs that were a part of Windows Vista are no longer present or have changed, resulting in the removal of certain functionality. Some notable Windows Vista features and components have been replaced or removed in Windows 7, including the classic Start Menu user interface, Windows Ultimate Extras, InkBall, and Windows Calendar. Three applications bundled with Windows Vista — Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Mail — are not included with Windows 7, but are instead available for free in a separate package called Windows Live Essentials. Additionally, it is no longer possible to eliminate anti-aliased text from the user interface.

Antitrust regulatory attention
As with other Microsoft operating systems, Windows 7 is being studied by United States federal regulators who oversee the company's operations following the 2001 United States v. Microsoft settlement. According to status reports filed, the three-member panel began assessing prototypes of the new operating system in February 2008. Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research said that, "[Microsoft's] challenge for Windows 7 will be how can they continue to add features that consumers will want that also don't run afoul of regulators."

Editions
To avoid running afoul of European antitrust regulations, Microsoft has chosen to ship Windows 7 without Internet Explorer in European Union member countries. It was also announced that the upgrade versions of Windows 7 would also not be available in Europe due to the possibility of needing additional testing for how upgrades would react to the versions without Internet Explorer.
Microsoft also proposed to the European Commission allowing users to download a competing browser from a "ballot" screen instead of providing a version of Windows completely without Internet Explorer installed at all. In response to criticism involving Windows 7 E and concerns from manufacturers about possible consumer confusion if a version of Windows 7 with Internet Explorer were shipped later after one without Internet Explorer, Microsoft announced that it would scrap the separate version for Europe and ship the standard upgrade and full packages worldwide.

Reception
Figures released by Amazon.co.uk in the UK shows that sales of Windows 7 in the first eight hours of trading surpassed demand of what took Windows Vista 17 weeks to achieve.

Windows 7 editions
Windows 7 will be available in six different editions, but only Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate will be available for retail sale in most countries. The other editions are focused at other markets, such as the developing world or enterprise use. Each edition of Windows 7 will include all of the capabilities and features of the edition below it. With the exception of Windows 7 Starter, all editions will support both 32-bit (IA-32) and 64-bit (x86-64) processor architectures. According to Microsoft, the features for all editions of Windows 7 will be stored on the machine, regardless of what edition is in use. Users who wish to upgrade to an edition of Windows 7 with more features can then use Windows Anytime Upgrade to purchase the upgrade, and unlock the features of those editions.
Microsoft announced Tuesday, July 21, 2009 that they will be offering a family pack of Windows 7 Home Premium (in select markets) which will allow installation on up to 3 PCs. The "Family Pack" will cost USD 149.99 in the United States.

Hardware requirements
Microsoft has published their minimum specifications for a system running Windows 7. Requirements for the 32-bit version are much the same as recommendations for premium editions of Vista, but the 64-bit version's are considerably higher. Microsoft has released a beta version of an upgrade advisor that scans a computer to see if it is compatible with Windows 7.
Minimum hardware requirements for Windows 7.

Architecture
32-bit
64-bit
Processor speed
1 GHz processor
Memory (RAM)
1 GB of RAM
2 GB of RAM
Graphics card
Support for DirectX 9 graphics device with 128MB of graphics memory (for Windows Aero)
HDD free space
16 GB of available disk space
20 GB of available disk space
Optical drive
DVD drive (only to install from DVD/CD Media)
Additional requirements to use certain features:
BitLocker requires Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 and requires a USB flash drive to use BitLocker To Go.
Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V enabled.