Vista also features new graphics features, the Windows Aero GUI, new applications ( such as Windows Calendar, Windows DVD Maker and some new games including Chess, Mahjong, and Purble Place ), Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 11, and a large number of underlying architectural changes.

Empirical tests with a 4. 2 GB fragmented file on a DVD media have shown that Microsoft Windows XP supports this, while Mac OS X ( as of 10. 4. 8 ) does not handle this case properly.

As complexity and potential programming faults of the set-top box increase, software such as Windows Vista's Media Center, MythTV, and Select-TV have developed features comparable to those of set-top boxes, ranging from basic DVR-like functionality to DVD copying, home automation, and housewide music or video playback.

DVD playback features minus the necessary decoders were integrated into Windows Media Player 8 for Windows XP.

Prior to the release of Windows Media Player in Windows 98 Second Edition, separate programs, CD Player, Deluxe CD Player, DVD Player and Media Player, were included in old versions of Microsoft Windows for playback of media files.

Although they aren't included in the regular CD / DVD shipments, subscribers can download old software such as MS-DOS 5. 0 and Windows 3. 1 from MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

Unlike the Windows 98 version, the new Windows Me version supports software decoding for playback of DVD movies without a dedicated decoder card.

On September 2, 2005, The Register published news that DVD Jon had defeated encryption in Microsoft's Windows Media Player by reverse engineering a proprietary algorithm that was ostensibly used to protect Windows Media Station NSC files from engineers sniffing for the files ' source IP address, port or stream format.

With Offline Update burned to a CD or DVD, a technician can update Windows 2000 / XP / Vista and Microsoft Office 2003 / 2007 without an Internet connection.

Filth Pig was supported with the singles / videos " Reload ", " The Fall ", " Lay Lady Lay " ( an unusual and unexpected cover of Bob Dylan's old country-tinged hit ) and " Brick Windows " and with a tour in 1996 ( the live performances were later anthologized on the Sphinctour album and DVD in 2002 ).

It was compatible to Windows DVD Maker, and was often considered the last step of Apple's iLife suite, bringing together the results of all of the other iLife apps onto a removable medium.

The film was initially released as a three-disc DVD set ( the movie on a standard video DVD, the movie again in a high definition Windows Media format, and a special features disc ) priced as high as $ 70.

* Windows Media Player applets, used to display embedded video files in Internet Explorer ( and other browsers that support the plugin )

Some, like VirtualBox and VMware Player run on Windows and Linux hosts and can run many other operating systems.

A number of features from Windows 98 were incorporated also, such as an improved Device Manager, Windows Media Player, and a revised DirectX that made it possible for the first time for many modern games to work on the NT kernel.

** Windows XP Home Edition N, as above, but without a default installation of Windows Media Player, as mandated by a European Union ruling

** Windows XP Professional N, as above, but without a default installation of Windows Media Player, as mandated by a European Union ruling

In some countries ( Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland ), there are other editions that lack some features such as Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and Internet Explorer called names such as " Windows 7 N ."

Microsoft developed a media player known as ActiveMovie in 1995 that allowed streaming media and included a proprietary streaming format, which was the precursor to the streaming feature later in Windows Media Player 6. 4 in 1999.

* Windows Media Player ( Playlist Files )

As mentioned, SMIL is not yet native to web browsers, so in order to put SMIL in a web page, one must embed it and open it in a plug-in such as Apple's QuickTime or Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

This halftime show was sponsored by Victoria's Secret and available exclusively in Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player also does not natively support Vorbis ; however, DirectShow filters exist to decode Vorbis in Windows Media Player and other Windows multimedia players that support DirectShow.

1993 saw a release for PCs with Windows 3. 1 as part of the original Microsoft Arcade package.

Examples of applications often classified as applets are all of the accessories bundled in Microsoft Windows ( such as Windows Notepad or Microsoft Paint ).

Tridgell was a major developer of the Samba software, analysing the Server Message Block protocol used for workgroup and network file sharing by Microsoft Windows products.

* wma – the popular Windows Media Audio format owned by Microsoft.

* Active Directory, a component of Microsoft Windows that provides distributed user management and authentication

Microsoft first introduced AGP support into Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 ( OSR2 version 1111 or 950B ) via the USB SUPPLEMENT to OSR2 patch.

One such program is ProSystem, written in C / C ++ for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Active Directory ( AD ) is a directory service created by Microsoft for Windows domain networks.

Stand-alone official AIM client software includes advertisements and is available for Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS.

A legal, out-of-the-box installer has been created for Microsoft Windows using WinUAE.

Microsoft dropped support for APM in Windows Vista.

Operating systems such as Microsoft Windows that display hard drive sizes using the customary binary prefix " GB " ( as it is used for RAM ) would display this as 279. 4 GB ( meaning 279. 4 × 1024 < sup > 3 </ sup >, or 279. 4 ×).

* Browser service, a feature of Microsoft Windows to let users browse and locate shared resources in neighboring computers

* Microsoft Windows contains application compatibility shims to make the platform compatible with most software from earlier 32-bit and 16-bit versions ( e. g. Civilization ( circa 1991, designed for Windows 3. 0 ) running on Windows Vista ).

** With the introduction of Windows 7 ( Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise editions ), Windows XP Mode enables full compatibility with older programs supported under Windows XP via Microsoft Virtual PC.

EFI booting has been supported in only Microsoft Windows versions supporting GPT, the Linux kernel 2. 6. 1 and later, and Mac OS X on Intel-based Macs.

It has been ported to Microsoft Windows and distributed with Cygwin and MinGW, to DOS by the DJGPP project, to Novell NetWare and to Android via various terminal emulation applications.

" SBCL runs on the platforms CMUCL does, except HP / UX ; in addition, it runs on Linux for AMD64, PowerPC, SPARC, MIPS, Windows x86 and has experimental support for running on Windows AMD64.

It has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms ( including Windows, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST, PlayStation, N-Gage and Super Nintendo ) and now exists in several versions.

Initial mount points can be configured in, which has a very similar format as on Unix systems, except that Windows paths appear in place of devices.

Cygwin 1. 5 represented them as Windows Explorer shortcuts, but this has been changed for reasons of performance and POSIX correctness.

The version of gcc that comes with Cygwin has various extensions for creating Windows DLLs, specifying whether a program is a windowing or console mode program, adding resources, etc.

* In Microsoft Windows, pressing the Application key or Shift + F10 opens a context menu for the region that has focus.

The X initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool ( XACT ), while the DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite.

Duke Nukem 3D has been ported to run on modern Microsoft Windows variants including Windows XP and Windows 7.

Microsoft has attempted to reduce system instability due to poorly written device drivers by creating a new framework for driver development, called Windows Driver Foundation ( WDF ).

For example, EDLIN in early MS-DOS versions and 32-bit versions of Windows NT has a somewhat similar syntax, and text editors in many MUDs ( LPMud and descendants, for example ) use ed-like syntax.

Originally developed on IRIX, Freeciv has been ported to many different operating systems: it is distributed with many Linux distributions, offers installers for Microsoft Windows, and has been known to run on Mac OS X, Solaris, Ultrix, QNX, OS / 2, Cygwin, AmigaOS, RISC OS, Maemo, ZETA, SkyOS and various BSDs.

It has the version number Windows NT 5. 0.

Windows Vista has the Aero theme

Windows Vista has the version number NT 6. 0.

Windows 7 has the version number NT 6. 1.

Microsoft has said that Windows Server 2012 was available on 4 September 2012 and Windows 8 will be available on October 26, 2012.