Microsoft stated in 2007 that it is planning Windows 7 development for a three-year time frame starting after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista, but that the final release date will be determined by product quality.
Unlike its predecessor, Windows 7 is intended to be an incremental upgrade with the goal of being fully compatible with existing device drivers, applications, and hardware. Presentations given by the company in 2008 have focused on multi-touch support, a redesigned Windows Shell with a new taskbar, a home networking system called HomeGroup, and performance improvements. Some applications that have been included with prior releases of Microsoft Windows, most notably Windows Mail (formerly Outlook Express), Windows Movie Maker, and Windows Photo Gallery, are no longer included with the operating system; they are instead offered separately as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.
Windows 7 - It's the next version of Windows for PCs, and it's the result of working hand-in-hand with our partners and with people who use Windows in the real world every day. We're paying particular attention to the things they're telling us are important to them and will make their PCs work the way they want them to - things like enhanced reliability, responsiveness, and faster boot and shut-down. We're also trying to make their everyday tasks easier, like connecting and syncing devices, browsing the web, and managing a home network.
Of course, we're also working on new capabilities, so people will be able to do things with Windows 7 that were difficult (or perhaps impossible) to do with PCs before. Finally, we're working hard to ensure that Windows 7 will run on any PC and work with any program that works today with Windows Vista, so upgrading from Windows Vista will be easy.
FEATURES:
Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.
According to reports sent to TG Daily, the Milestone 1 build of Windows 7 adds support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors and a new version of Windows Media Center. New features in Milestone 1 also reportedly include Gadgets being integrated into Windows Explorer, a Gadget for Windows Media Center, the ability to visually pin and unpin items from the Start Menu and Taskbar, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack being integrated, Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), and a multiline Calculator featuring Programmer and Statistics modes along with unit conversion.
Reports indicate that a feedback tool included in Milestone 1 lists some coming features: the ability to store Internet Explorer settings on a Windows Live account, updated versions of Paint and WordPad, and a 10-minute install process. In addition, improved network connection tools might be included.
Many new items have been added to the Control Panel including: Accelerators, ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Infrared, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, Windows Solution Center, and Display. Windows Security Center has been renamed the Windows Solution Center (Windows Health Center in earlier builds) which encompass both security and maintenance of the computer.
The taskbar has seen the biggest visual changes, where the Quick Launch has been merged with the buttons to create an enhanced taskbar or what Microsoft internally refers to as the "Superbar". This enhanced taskbar also enables the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks.
According to released PDC 2008, which was held 27-30 October 2008, session information, Windows 7 discussions will cover "enhancements to the taskbar, Start Menu, thumbnails and their desktop elements", 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,[56] and improved globalization support through a new Extended Linguistic Services API. Windows 7 will also contain a new FireWire (IEEE 1394) stack that fully supports IEEE 1394b with S800, S1600 and S3200 data rates.
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.
BUILDS:
Build 6801On 8 October 2008, screenshots of Windows 7 build 6801 were leaked. On 28 October 2008, Microsoft distributed build 6801 to attendees at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC). It has since been leaked to bittorrent networks. It features an enhanced taskbar similar to the one in build 6933 although it is disabled by default. An unofficial patch has been released to enable the new taskbar in build 6801.
Pre-Beta 1Microsoft also demonstrated build 6933.winmain.081020-1842 during the PDC, but did not give it to attendees. On 14 November 2008, screenshots of Windows 7 build 6936 were leaked by Winfuture. On 20 November 2008, Microsoft posted screenshots of build 6948 on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. In early December, WinFutere.de leaked screenshots of Build 6956, which demonstrated a new bootscreen. (Announced by WinFuture since Build 6954) and several improvements. At the WinHEC in China an attendee from the conference leaked a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) image of Windows 7 Build 6956, then an ISO image was published, in this same site we can see many new screenshots of this build. Lately, Paul Thurrott posted several screenshots on his website of a newer build.
Beta 1Microsoft has confirmed that Beta 1 will be handed out at MSDN Developer Conference on 13th January 2009 in the form of a DVD.
Release Candidate
The release candidate for Windows 7 will be available after Beta 1.
Final Build
While officially Microsoft has stated that Windows 7 will be released three years after Vista was shipped, the company has indicated that it plans to release Windows 7 in mid-2009, in time for installation on PCs that will ship for the Christmas 2009 buying season.
Windows 7 MP3 Corruption Issues Fixed With Update KB961367
The first hotfix for Windows 7 is now officially released. The Update for Windows 7 Beta (KB961367) is the first publicly known update the Microsoft released for Windows 7. KB 961367 update is intended to fix a bug where Windows Media Player 12 (WMP12) in Windows 7 may potentially cause data corruption issue on MP3 files.
The symptom of the MP3 corruption problem is that approximately 2-3 seconds will get shaved off from the beginning of MP3s that have variable bitrate if user configures Windows Media Player 12 settings to retrieve additional information from the Internet to update the media files.
Home Page - http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/
Download (32Bit): 2.43 GB
Mirror:
Download (64Bit): 3.15 GB
Mirror:
Activator & Update KB961367 for Beta 1: 11.82 MB
Mirror:
Password: www.dl4all.com