It may be the longest-lived version of Windows, ever. Windows XP was generally available on October 25, 2001. And it didn’t hit EOL until April 8, 2014. That’s 4,548 days or 12 years, 5 months, and 14 days (not including the end date, add one more day if you’re feeling generous). Now, I’ve learned that the familiar grassy hillside from the XP default wallpaper that graced my desktop for much of that interval is available in 4K format for download. The old XP Bliss wallpaper brings back memories galore for me, as it may do for you.
An auto-scaled version of that download appears as the lead-in graphic for this admittedly nostalgic blog post. You can download the original from the Microsoft Design team. And here’s a shout-out to the Neowin team whose June 9 story brought this onto my radar.
If XP Bliss Wallpaper Brings Back Memories, Grab It!
You too, can grab and use this image yourself if you like. It works for wallpaper, or goes readily into your desktop background rotation. I remember that grassy sward both fondly and well from those days from decades past. If you’re of like mind you may, like me, be inclined to grab yourself a copy, too. The original weighs in a around 7MB in size, with native resolution of 4089×2726 pixels (hence its 4K label).
It’s big enough, in fact, that WordPress had to downscale it so I could run it as my “featured image” here. That took it down from the aforementioned resolution to a less-hefty 2560 by 1707 pixels instead. And there it sits, at the head of this post.
