History
In 2000, Microsoft was planning to follow up Windows XP, and its server counterpart, Windows Server 2003 (both codenamed Whistler), with a major new release of Windows, codenamed Blackcomb (both codenames refer to the Whistler-Blackcomb resort). This new version was, at that time, scheduled for a 2005 release.
Major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data, and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. In this context, a feature mentioned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for Blackcomb was "a pervasive typing line that will recognize the sentence that typing in."
Later, Blackcomb was delayed, and an interim, minor release, codenamed "Longhorn" (named for the Longhorn Tavern between the resorts), was announced for a 2003 release. By the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb, including WinFS, the Desktop Window Manager, and new versions of system components built on the .NET Framework. After the 2003 "Summer of Worms", where three major viruses − Blaster, Sobig, and Welchia − exploited flaws in Windows operating systems within a short time period, Microsoft changed its development priorities, putting some of Longhorn's major development work on hold in order to develop new service packs for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Development of Longhorn was also "reset" in September 2004.
Read more about this topic: Development Of Windows 7
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