Vista os comparison

Microsoft lists the system requirements for these editions as being the same as their desktop variants. These editions are licensed exclusively for the development of embedded devices.

Upgrade paths from Windows XP and between different Vista editions. Dotted lines indicate the need for a "clean install". However, not all potential upgrade combinations exist. The accompanying chart indicates the possible upgrade paths:. Note: If a user is running a bit version of Windows a user can only upgrade to another bit version: to upgrade from bit to bit requires a clean install.

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Microsoft Shared source. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? It's often said that recent versions of Windows have become bloated, and it's hardly unreasonable to expect each new OS to perform better than its previous iteration. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the lightweight OS runs quickly on today's processors.

Newer OSes can optimise for modern hardware and include more powerful features, but is this extra functionality really just slowing us down? To find out, we decided to test each operating system's performance on an average PC. We installed XP, Vista and Windows 7 in that order all bit versions on the machine's GB hard drive and ran a number of real-world benchmarks to find out which OS was best.

The boot time test provided no surprises — Vista took the longest time to get started, XP came in second place and Windows 7 was the fastest. We bear good news. Even the beta of Windows 7 can beat Vista's sluggish start. At first it seemed like our file transfer benchmarks would deliver the same results. Vista produced poor copy speeds in our small file tests, XP again placed second and Windows 7 came out on top. In addition to setting the colors of the window chrome and desktop background, themes in Windows 7 include a sound set, and desktop slideshow settings.

The default theme is titled "Windows 7", which consists of a single desktop background codenamed "Harmony" and the same sound set as Windows Vista. Six new "Aero Themes" are included. Windows Vista introduced Gadgets and a sidebar which provides the ability to anchor Gadgets to the side of the user's desktop.

In Windows 7, the sidebar has been removed, while gadgets can still be placed on the desktop. Windows 7 adds a Windows Media Center gadget to the default collection while removing the Contacts and Notes gadgets. Unlike Windows Vista, all gadgets run in a single process, which saves memory, and the process is not run at all if the user has no gadgets on the desktop.

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 supports Libraries , which are virtual folders that aggregate content from various locations and present them in a unified view. Searching in a library automatically federates the query to the remote systems, in addition to searching on the local system, so that files on the remote systems are also searched.

Unlike search folders, Libraries are backed by a physical location which allows files to be saved in the Libraries. Windows 7's Start menu retains the two-column layout of its predecessors, with several functional changes:. The user interface for font management has been overhauled. As with Windows Vista, the collection of installed fonts is shown in a Windows Explorer window, but fonts from the same font family appear as "stacks" instead of as individual icons.

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