From pixels to pinot: The Windows XP 'Bliss' wallpaper hill was real and this is what it looks like now

Windows XP was the most blissful iteration of Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system. That's an objective, empirical, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed, double-blind fact. After all, it's arguably most famous for its signature "Bliss" wallpaper depicting a rolling green hill, deep blue sky and little fluffy clouds. But whatever happened to that hill? Was it actually real? And if it was, what does it look like today?

Turns out, not only was the Bliss hill real, that high-saturation image apparently wasn't even manipulated. The hill in question was located in Sonoma County, California. Indeed, it still is.

According to Instagram account Inside History, the Windows XP wallpaper image was taken in 1996 by photographer Charles O’Rear. It was acquired by Microsoft some time between then and the 2001 release of Windows XP. The rest, as they say, is history, inside or otherwise.

The original photo was taken with what's described as a "medium-format" camera. It's an analogue photo originally, captured on film. A full-resolution version of Bliss can be seen here, clocking in at 4,510 by 3,627 pixels. Windows XP shipped with a version measuring just 800 by 600 pixels.

Anywho, Inside History has a series of follow up images taken from the same vantage point in 2006, 2020, 2024 and 2025. By 2006, the hill had transitioned from rolling grasses to what appears to be some kind of vineyard, a status that seems to be maintained in the latest 2025 image.

That scans given Sonoma County is said to account for 6% of Californian wine production based on around 60 varieties of grapes. According to the Sonoma Wine Grape Annual report (PDF warning), the county cranked out 24 million bottles of the stuff in 2021 from roughly 62,000 acres of vineyards.

Of course, Windows XP is a now long-dead OS. Microsoft ended support for the regular Home and Professional versions back in 2014, while the last version to die was one for embedded point-of-sale devices, which was pulled from MS's support program in 2019.

It was a hugely successful OS that popped up everywhere, including the International Space Station, though it was replaced even there by Linux in 2013. It was also widely regarded as a huge step forward over the Windows 98 and Windows ME versions that preceded it. Indeed, if there has been a more beloved version of Windows, it's not obvious what it is.

Windows 11, of course, was released in 2021 and you might expect there to be another version coming along soon. However, at CES Microsoft published a blog post saying that 2025 would be, "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh." So, if there is going to be a Windows 12, it looks unlikely to be this year.