David Neil Cutler Sr. is an American software engineer. He developed several computer operating systems, namely Microsoft's Windows NT, and Digital Equipment Corporation's RSX-11M, VAXELN, and VMS.
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base is a software architecture designed by Microsoft which claimed to provide users of the Windows operating system with better privacy, security, and system integrity. NGSCB was the result of years of research and development within Microsoft to create a secure computing solution that equaled the security of closed platforms such as set-top boxes while simultaneously preserving the backward compatibility, flexibility, and openness of the Windows operating system. Microsoft's primary stated objective with NGSCB was to "protect software from software."
Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2003. Windows Server 2003 is the successor to the Server editions of Windows 2000 and the predecessor to Windows Server 2008. An updated version, Windows Server 2003 R2, was released to manufacturing on December 6, 2005. Windows Server 2003 is based on Windows XP.
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly three years earlier. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time. It was succeeded by Windows 8 in October 2012.
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on November 8, 2006, and over the following two months, it was released in stages to business customers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and retail channels. On January 30, 2007, it was released internationally and was made available for purchase and download from the Windows Marketplace; it is the first release of Windows to be made available through a digital distribution platform.
Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server", is the eighth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on February 27, 2008. Derived from Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 is the successor of Windows Server 2003 and the predecessor to Windows Server 2008 R2. It removed support for processors without ACPI, and is the first version that includes Hyper-V.
Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was a series of conferences for software developers; the conference was held infrequently to coincide with beta releases of the Windows operating system, and showcased topics of interest to those developing hardware and software for the new version of Windows.
Peter Nicholas Biddle is a technology evangelist from the United States. His primary fields of interest while employed at major technology companies such as Intel and Microsoft were content distribution, secure computing, and encryption. Since his departure from Intel, he has co-founded and led several industrial design companies.
Windows Mobility Center is a component of Microsoft Windows, introduced in Windows Vista, that centralizes information and settings most relevant to mobile computing.
Windows SideShow was a feature by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista to supply information such as e-mail, instant messages, and RSS feeds from a personal computer to a local or remote peripheral device or display. SideShow was intended to enhance the Windows experience by enabling new mobility scenarios for the Windows platform and by providing power saving benefits as part of Microsoft's broader efforts regarding a mobile initiative.
The development of Windows Vista began in May 2001, prior to the release of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, and continued until November 2006.
The Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT) is a module of Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11 that is available in the Control Panel under Performance Information and Tools (except in Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11). It measures various performance characteristics and capabilities of the hardware it is running on and reports them as a Windows Experience Index (WEI) score. The WEI includes five subscores: processor, memory, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, and disk; the basescore is equal to the lowest of the subscores and is not an average of the subscores. WinSAT reports WEI scores on a scale from 1.0 to 5.9 for Windows Vista, 7.9 for Windows 7, and 9.9 for Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11.
Development of Windows XP started in 1999 as a successor to the Windows Neptune and Windows Odyssey projects. Neptune was originally going to be the successor of Windows Me, though based on the NT kernel. Microsoft merged the teams working on Neptune with that of Windows Odyssey, Windows 2000's successor, in early 2000. The resulting project, codenamed "Whistler", went on to become Windows XP.
FreedomHEC was an "unconference" for computer hardware engineers and device driver developers that ran from 2006 to 2012. It focused on making computer hardware interoperate with free software and open source operating systems, especially Linux.
Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) is speech recognition developed by Microsoft for Windows Vista that enables voice commands to control the desktop user interface, dictate text in electronic documents and email, navigate websites, perform keyboard shortcuts, and operate the mouse cursor. It supports custom macros to perform additional or supplementary tasks.
Windows Easy Transfer was a specialized file-transfer program developed by Microsoft that allowed users of the Windows operating system to transfer personal files and settings from a computer running an earlier version of Windows to a computer running a newer version.
Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit, formerly Windows Automated Installation Kit, is a collection of tools and technologies produced by Microsoft designed to help deploy Microsoft Windows operating system images to target computers or to a virtual hard disk image in VHD format. It was first introduced with Windows Vista. WAIK is a required component of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.
Microsoft Product Activation is a DRM technology used by Microsoft Corporation in several of its computer software programs, most notably its Windows operating system and its Office productivity suite. The procedure enforces compliance with the program's end-user license agreement by transmitting information about both the product key used to install the program and the user's computer hardware to Microsoft, inhibiting or completely preventing the use of the program until the validity of its license is confirmed.
Joe Belfiore is an American business executive who has held various roles at Microsoft since August 1990, mostly in the field of user experience. A frequent speaker, Belfiore has appeared at many Microsoft conferences, often giving demos on stage and/or acting as a spokesperson for the company. In 2018, he was named the #1 Microsoft Influencer for fans to follow on Twitter. In 2004, he gave a TED Talk in-person at the TED Conference in Monterey,CA. In summer 2023 he retired from Microsoft and is now active as chair of a non-profit board.
Microsoft Build is an annual conference event held by Microsoft, aimed at software engineers and web developers using Windows, Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. First held in 2011, it serves as a successor for Microsoft's previous developer events, the Professional Developers Conference and MIX. The attendee price was (US)$2,195 in 2016, up from $2,095 in 2015. It sold out quickly, within one minute of the registration site opening in 2016.
