Visual tour: 25 years of Windows

[JMH]

Twenty-five years ago, on Nov. 20, 1985, Microsoft introduced its first version of Windows to the world. Not many people outside the technical press or the tech industry took notice. Product launch events that cost hundreds of millions of dollars were still years away.

What's changed in Windows in the last 25 years? Plenty. In this image gallery, we take a look at the various faces of Windows over the past couple of decades and clue you in to what happened at every stage of the operating system's development.

1985: Windows 1.0

Windows started in 1981 as a project called Interface Manager and experienced a series of delays getting out of the gate. When it was finally released in late 1985 as
Windows 1.0, it made a ripple, not a splash. It had to be run on top of DOS, few applications were written for it, and application windows couldn't be overlapped (they had to be tiled).

Still, the OS allowed for multitasking of Windows apps (not DOS ones) and, even though few knew it at the time, it would eventually become the foundation for the Microsoft empire.

Windows 1.0 shipped with a handful of apps, including the Notepad text editor, a rudimentary calendar and the long-lived graphics painting program Paint. The operating system required MS-DOS Version 2.0, 256KB of memory and a graphics adapter. It could be run either from a hard disk or on two floppy disks running simultaneously -- in other words, you couldn't swap the disks in and out of a single drive.

Visual tour: 25 years of Windows - Computerworld

 

[si8mon]

Interesting. Computers have come a long way in 25 years.

 

[hello people]

Some nice memories there

 

[Dave76]

Nice article, they were all good OS in their day.

I didn't have problems with any of the so called bad/unpopular versions they were talking about.

 

[mickey megabyte]

Interesting. Computers have come a long way in 25 years.

try to imagine where they'll be in another 25 years...:shock:

 

[TVeblen]

I've still got a copy of Dos 6.0 and Windows 3 on floppy disks.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to install them on an i7 computer?

 

[Zepher]

I've still got a copy of Dos 6.0 and Windows 3 on floppy disks.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to install them on an i7 computer?

try it and let us know. I am curious as well.

I ran Windows ME for 1 day. Had BSOD's all day long so I went back to Win 2000.

 

[Skulblaka]

I've still got a copy of Dos 6.0 and Windows 3 on floppy disks.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to install them on an i7 computer?

The very fabric and balance of the universe will shatter, and existence as we know it will end. :devil:

 

[TVeblen]

I'm curious and tempted. Maybe one rainy day.....

I've got a feeling the installer will just quit.
I recall trying to install and old CAD program I had, GenericCAD (1994), on my brand new Pentium II computer with a 6GB hard drive. The installer started and stopped with an error message (paraphrased):
"GenericCAD requires 550 KB of disk space to install. Your hard drive has only 5,500,000 KB free. Please delete some files and try to install again"!

 

[TVeblen]

The very fabric and balance of the universe will shatter, and existence as we know it will end. :devil:

That too.

 

[Edward 066]

Very Interesting Thanks for sharing

 

[targnik]

Will 7 have the longevity of xp??

...or will I be shelling out the $$ in 2 more years

 

[hello people]

You should be right for at least 5 years on W7...right? I hope anyway

 

[whs]

And they forgot this one:

 

[Skulblaka]

Or this;

 

[Lebon14]

Very interresting read!
Bad memories with Windows Me and Win95 here '^_^

 

[jeniuskid]

can't wait for windows 8 beta

 

[richnrockville]

I run Windows for WorkGroups on a Dos 6.22 Virtual Hard disk under Windows 7. I can even get on the internet with it.
Why, you ask, Because...

I had to install DOS on the Virtual hard disk first and when it came up and asked me to format the C drive, I did get a bit nervous. Then dos installed fine. Installing windows was a bit tricky as you have to have several drivers from different internet sites before it will use TCP/IP.
But I periodically put it in full screen mode and show people that I can run dos/win on my laptop.
I have several Virtual Hard drives with Dos, Windows 98, W2K, XP and Ubuntu which all work. There are some wierd things you have to do to get them working correctly but they do work.

YMMV
Rich

 

[Spidey1976]

I've still got a copy of Dos 6.0 and Windows 3 on floppy disks.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to install them on an i7 computer?

lol - our first home PC had DOS 5 and Win 3.1... I still have the DOS 6.22 upgrade disks and remember how excited I was to get those

 

[mickey megabyte]

i've still got my first cpu