Development of Windows Vista How to Find Build and Revision Number of Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 Installed Development of Windows Vista Development of Windows Vista occurred over the span of five and a half years, starting in earnest in May 2001, prior to the release of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, and continuing until November 2006. Microsoft originally expected to ship the new version sometime late in 2003 as a minor step between Windows XP (codenamed "Whistler") and Windows 7 (codenamed "Blackcomb" and "Vienna"). Vista's original codename, "Longhorn", was an allusion to this plan: While Whistler and Blackcomb are large ski resorts
Technical features new to Windows Vista firmware technologies such as the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. The new architecture introduces a firmware-independent data store and is backward compatible with previous versions of the Windows operating system. Windows Vista introduces an improved driver model, Windows Driver Foundation which is an opt-in framework to replace the older Windows Driver Model. It includes: Windows Vista includes the following changes and enhancements in processor power management: Windows Vista is the first client version of Windows to ship with the .NET Framework. Specifically, it includes .NET Framework 2.0 and .NET Framework 3.0 (previously known as WinFX) but not version 1.0 or 1.1.