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I'm interested in finding an unabridged technical manual documenting all of the differences between the two operating systems. In Tanenbaum's latest edition of Modern Operating Systems (3rd Edition), he dives into the technical layout of Windows Vista.

I'm looking for something similar or in greater detail describing Windows 7 and also the differences between Windows 7 and Vista.

Any leads, suggestions, tips? They are Much appreciated.

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Check the complete new features list on Wikpedia and a presentation on the kernel improvements.

See these three talks by the kernel developers:

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Windows 7 is very similar internally to Vista. The primary changes in Windows 7 made major improvements in performance and fixed annoyances from Vista such as the UAC.

A few extra things to do with device handling have been improved as well, but the driver structure did not change dramatically. A few new wizards here and there also.

For more details:

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  • Also, a ton of UI refinement to take advantage of some of the behind the scenes improvements first introduced in Vista. For example, the calculator uses improved arithmetic handling that was added to vista.
    – Joel Coehoorn
    Apr 12, 2011 at 2:09
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    Lets make it simple, Vista bad, W7 good. ;->
    – Moab
    Apr 12, 2011 at 2:43
  • @Moab Let's make it even simpler - Vista bad, W7 slightly better, anything else and you're practically golden :P
    – eckza
    Apr 12, 2011 at 3:39
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    Although popular opinion would lead you to believe "Vista bad", I do not think it's necessarily true. Windows 7 is generally considered a good Windows release. The bad perception of Vista was a result of terrible driver support from the gate. By the time Windows 7 came out, that was not as big of an issue because OEM's had time to catch up.
    – Belmin Fernandez
    Apr 12, 2011 at 23:46
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It's worth noting that, along with excessive memory usage, lots of features were removed as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_7

Probably half of those affect me and so my ample desktop remains on Vista.

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