Windows 7 full packages worldwide. As with the previous version of Windows, an N version, which does not come with Windows Media Player, has been released in Europe, but only for sale directly from Microsoft sales websites and selected others. Windows 7 Windows 7 is a personal computer operating system that was produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009 and became generally available on October 22, 2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2,
Windows Vista flops. Microsoft's then much smaller competitor Apple noted that, despite Vista's far greater sales, its own did not seem to have suffered after its release, and would later invest in advertising mocking Vista's unpopularity with users. Computer manufactures such as Dell, Lenovo, and Hewlett-Packard released their newest computers with Windows Vista pre-installed; however, after the negative reception of the operating system, they also began selling their computers with Windows XP CDs included because of a drop in sales. A Gartner research report predicted that Vista business adoption in 2008 would overtake that of XP during the same time frame (21.3%