23rd Annual Technical Excellence Awards from PC Magazine: Breakthroughs!: Operating System
Released to manufacturers in November, Microsoft’s new operating system has miles of code and some very cool tech—as it should, considering the years of development that have gone into it. Microsoft has rewritten the entire kernel to make it more secure and stable, and the company has fixed problems such as heap fragmentation. New features include 64-bit support, a better sleep mode, and a SuperFetch system that should load applications faster and take advantage of USB flash memory drives. Then there’s Aero, the new graphics engine that renders the desktop in 3D space. The built-in compositing engine will finally allow documents to look the same across different displays, with typefaces rendering to the same size whatever the monitor’s native resolution. And don’t forget Microsoft Vista’s neat “flip 3D” view, the subject of oohs and ahhs for at least a year now.