

The interface feels more modern, file navigation has been improved, and system security has been designed to be stronger than Windows XP. Overall, Vista is a significant upgrade to the Windows operating system. To ship the consumer version by early 2007, the new file system called Windows Future Storage, or WinFS, was left out of the release and was later canceled. Several delays pushed back the release date to 2006 and eventually to the beginning of 2007. The operating system was originally slated to ship in 2003 as an update to Windows XP, but Microsoft decided to make additional updates to the operating system and scheduled it for release in 2005.

Windows Vista was code-named "Longhorn" for much of the development process.
