Windows Client and IE Overview

The current Windows client release is Windows 7 SP1, which became generally available in Feb. 2011. This first service pack for Windows 7 is a common service pack shared with Windows Server 2008 R2 and adds dynamic memory and RemoteFX to improve virtualization.

The second Vista service pack was released in Apr. 2009. Among other bug and security fixes, Windows Vista SP2 included changes to application compatibility, Bluetooth support, Windows Search, and Blu-ray Disc support for data recording.

The next version of the Windows client OS, code-named Windows 8, is currently under development and will be available for the x86, x64, and ARM system-on-a-chip processor architectures. More information on Windows 8 will be provided at the BUILD conference in Sept. 2011.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer (IE) 9 in Mar. 2011. This release of IE includes increased performance with graphics and JavaScript and improves privacy with support for “Do Not Track” to reduce the information sent to advertising Web sites. It runs on Windows Vista and Windows 7, but does not run on Windows XP. IE8 continues to ship as part of Windows 7 (which cannot run older versions of IE). Due to Windows 8 using HTML5, CSS3.0, and JavaScript as a common programming platform across different processor architectures, future releases of IE may once again be dependent on OS releases.