The countdown from 1.0 to 7...
By Tim Ferguson, 10 December 2008 11:46
Windows 2.0 emerged in 1987 and added some new features to the Windows recipe which took advantage of more memory and improved processing power of the Intel 286 processor.
The new features included the communication between different applications (Dynamic Data Exchange), overlapping windows and use of keyboard combinations for certain tasks.
Picture credit: Microsoft
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Comments
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1. anonymous
Wasn't it the Apple Mac (possibly as the Lisa) that altered our approach to desktop computing, with Windows as a very inferior copy?
2. Biscuit Tin
Windows was always playing catch-up with other more advanced OS's at the time like, RiscOS, Amiga OS, Mac OS and Unix (X windows). It wasn't until Win 95 that the internet was supported properly! Unix could do this from the word GO!
3. Roy Corneloues
I wouldn't call Windows 1,2 or 3 an "operating system". It sat on top of DOS and you has to type "win" at the DOS prompt to start it...
4. adam Cainer
O happy memories...
But if this is a potted history of Windows, why miss out pictures of Windows NT and its derivations?
Or for that matter What about OS/2 that was co-developed by Microsoft and became 'merged' into NT?
5. Simon
As Biscuit Tin says, it was hardly a big breakthrough unless you were blinkered to everything going on outside Redmond.
"...and changed the way computer users could interact with their PCs using bitmap graphics and a mouse." Err no, Windows didn't do that, Apple did it a year earlier, and work done by Xerox at it's PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre). So it changed the way "PC" users worked, the rest of the industry was already ahead of them - and it's still the same 20-odd years later.
6. Drew Stephenson
The level of anti-microsoft feeling articles like this generate always amazes me. So it's not the best OS in the world? So it wasn't the first to do XYZ? Fact is that for both business and personal* use it's the most common by a country mile.
So you've got something better? Great, go you! Enjoy, but get over it please!
Strewth, it's not even that I like microsoft, i've had my share of corrupted files and reboots, but i'm not driven to the animosity that seems to come round everytime with an article like this (mostly it would appear from non-pc users).
Relax, let it go, chill.
* I fully accept that from a personal perspective this may well change as tools like the i-phone bring desktop-power computing to people who would otherwise never use them
7. anonymous
Well companys always borrow from eachother, the first people to use windows interface was Xerox
8. Andersen John
Drew Stephenson you are totally right.
Peoples bla bla bla against Windows is getting under my nerves. Show me 25+ larger companies where all is sitting in front of Linux boxes instead of Windows boxes and I will be surpriced... I really doubt that many uses it for workstation purposes. I like Linux and I like Windows, personelly I prefer Win because everything is so damn easy to fix in it. I got an IT education and there we needed to learn Linux amoung other things, as both Windows, Linux, Samba, Novell, etc etc needed to be part of the same network. It was ok but it never got me convinced it is better than Windows just different. All the talk about "but it is freeee" is just so silly... Anyway back to topic: I think M$ Win rulez and I hope it will continue to do so for many many years to come.
9. Karen Challinor
when working for a company many years ago, the development team migrated from Win 3.1 to Win 95 and I had to demonstrate the features so people would know their way around it a bit and not be hunting for applications
I uttered the fateful words "...and of course its more stable than earlier versions"
my very next mouse click produced a BSOD
who says there isn't a god
10. Carl Bennett
Ah, Windows 3.1. The only version that ever worked properly. Sort of.
Glory days. Blur were a band, not a cartoon in them days. I remember when all this were fields. And so on.
11. Richard A
Ah yes, I remember well... and I particularly remember the great excitement surrounding the launch of Windows 95 which was supposed to be the dawn of a new era...
However, I feel I am looking at the history of the Mac OS interface, but with a one to three year time lag.
It would be interesting to see a feature comparing each OS's incarnation side-by side (together with the launch dates) to see just how much the boys from Redmond really did, er, flatter the Cupertino Kid.
12. Nigel Goodey
Unfortunately, Drew, you ARE missing the point somewhat!
- it's not Microsoft-bashing to point out that Xerox PARC, Apple and most flavours of *nix were all using a windowed GUI (and a mouse) before Windows v1 in 1985! Please take the chip off your shoulder...
I also agree with another poster - 3.1 was one of the more stable versions - hopefully MS can get back to those days with 7.