During the fall of 2006 as we were completing the final release of Windows Vista, I was getting a lot of questions about how Windows Vista compared to the original vision of Windows Longhorn. I had someone on my team go back and look at the feature set that was first discussed at the October, 2003 PDC and not only did we deliver the key functionality we discussed, but we went beyond and delivered some amazing innovations that we hadn't thought of back in 2003.
I was curious to see what part of the data management scenarios we showed at the PDC in 2003 were available on the final Windows Vista product -- so I watched the videos from the PDC to find out. As I discussed in my blog entry about working with data on Windows Vista, almost everything that we wanted to enable for searching, indexing and accessing data is in fact possible on Windows Vista. While we initially thought we would have to replace the storage system with WinFS, we were able to deliver on the vision by simply enhancing the existing system.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words -- and if that is true, than a video is worth a million, so go check out a little video that a team member put together summarizing the history.
Windows Vista includes innovation after innovation. We lead in so many areas including stunning handwriting recognition, speech recognition, TV integration, gaming, and feature after feature such as Shadow Copy, SideShow, ReadyBoost, and more. For example, even in core areas such as data management, Windows Vista has superior capability (well beyond search -- as I discussed in my blog entry) compared to other systems that ended up including simple search following our breakthrough demonstration at the PDC in 2003.
I can't tell you how proud I am of the Windows team here at Microsoft and our partners around the world. Their hard work has resulted in a significant milestone for the Windows Platform -- and their focus on engineering excellence has made Windows Vista the highest quality version of Windows ever. What is impressive here is that between the time we demonstrated Windows Vista (codename Longhorn) in October of 2003 and when we released it to manufacturing in November, 2006, the team also delivered:
- Windows XP Service Pack 2 (August, 2004): Other companies would have called this a major release and charged money for it!
- Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (August, 2004): Our handwriting recognition is even better in Windows Vista, but this innovative product broke new ground in handwriting capability.
- Windows XP Starter Edition (September 2004): Our innovation here is opening computing to many throughout the world where previously it was out of their price range.
- Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (October, 2004): This innovative product ushered in a new era in home entertainment -- moving computing into the living room -- that others are just trying to imitate now.
- Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (March, 2005)
- Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions (April, 2005)
- Windows XP Professional x64 Edition (April, 2005)
- Windows Server 2003 R2 (December, 2005)
- And more, including Windows XP Embedded updates, etc.
We are just days away from the launch of Windows Vista. Starting on January 30, everyone will be able to use these innovations firsthand. And I can't wait.
jim