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Couldn't Windows 7 Be Backported To XP? (sorry about the useless link) (microsoft.com)

2 points by nintendo1889 ↗ HN
Some features, such as the security changes for autoplay on flash drives due to the Conficker worm to XP and the ribbon interface for Vista, have already been backported. Windows 7's Windows Update is also part of Vista SP2 now. One feature that isn't non-trivial is branchcache. My point being that all these new features are all user-facing, non-system features that could be part of XP and Vista. But the HN community probably already knew this.

6 comments

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daleharvey
if you want to ask a question, just dont provide a url
makecheck
I suppose it depends on the features you want.

They could probably have implemented Aero Snap on Windows 95. And I'm sure the shareware authors will backport this sooner or later. Same with most of the changes to the task bar.

On the other hand, some of the major graphical changes are probably more complex than they seem, and rely on significant changes to the guts of the OS.

jerf
What is the difference you think you see between "Windows 7" and "Windows 7 backported to XP"? If I gave you one of each of those, how would you tell the difference?
wmf
If 7 was backported to XP (presumably as a service pack) it would be free.
nailer
Windows Presentation Foundation was backported to XP. So you could probably recreate the Windows 7 shell on XP if you felt the need. As for the rest, I'm not sure...
Garra
Can you backport an OS? Drivers? Sure. Subsystems, absolutely. But a whole OS? Isn't that like asking to backport Porsche to a Beetle? Anyway, if the end result is a Porsche, why not just start with it?