The history of Windows Vista

section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 30.11.2005

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Read here about the history of Longhorn releases and leaks. The phenomenon all started November 19, 2002.

Build 3683 – Leaked November 19, 2002. First public leak of Windows “Longhorn”. This build is from Lab 06; contained extras from the Avalon lab that are not seen in other builds (new display properties dialog box, etc). Some features were broken, such as Internet Explorer downloads. (lab06_N.020923-1821)
Build 3718 – Leaked April 30, 2004. (lab06_N.021119-1730)
Build 4008 – Leaked February 28, 2003. Second leak. Contained a cleaner version of the “Plex” visual style; Internet Explorer downloads fixed, more sidebar tiles. (main.030219-1933)
Build 4015 – Leaked April 2003. Third Leak. We prefer to call this the build from hell. Not much different from 4008, except the new style taskbar was enabled by default and could only be disabled by turning off the sidebar. This build consumed HUGE amounts of memory in very little time. (main.030328-1500)
Build 4029 – Leaked September 23, 2003. Fourth leak. Displayed the beginnings of the new style Explorer windows, contained a new sidebar clock. (main.030619-0000)
Build 4051 – Released October 25, 2003. Released at the Professional Developer Conference, this build was supposed to be quite stable, as it was the first developer preview of Longhorn, but it ended up being horrible as far as being able to develop and test sidebar tiles went. It just leaked too much memory which hindered the ability to do anything useful with it. Introduction of the “Slate” theme, “Plex” was removed. (idx02.031001-1340)
Build 4053 – Leaked March 1, 2004. Explorer memory leak seems to have been fixed for the most part. More responsive than 4051. (main.031022-1720)
Build 4074 – Released at the WinHEC Engineering Conference on May 4, 2004. New features include the Jade theme, more sidebar tiles, etc. (4074.idx02.040425-1535)
Build 4083 – Leaked November 10, 2005. This build is a stripped down version of Longhorn and only works on 64-bit proccessors. ( 4083.main.040516-1537 )
Build 5048 – Released at the WinHEC Conference on April 25, 2005. Memory leak seems to be non-existant now. ( 5048.winmain_idx02.050401-0536)
Build 5112 – Released to offical beta testers on July 27, 2005. First build released with the name "Windows Vista". Includes full Aero Glass support and IE 7. First offical beta. ( 5112.winmain_beta1.050720-1600 )
Build 5219 – Leaked from PDC 2005 on September 14th. The ISO image was found on a computer at the show and transferred to an iPod and leaked from there. This build brings back the sidebar that has been missing since 4074. ( 5219.winmain_idx02.050824-2010 )