History Of Microsoft Windows

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First, there was the dark ages of Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and Millennium. Then, Windows XP marked the era of the first enlightenment. The False prophet Windows Vista showed up, but was immediately dismissed. Finally, our only true savior Windows 7 was born! Then end.

Nothing that came after that is worth mentioning...
 


That actually summarizes the whole thing rather effectively. I think Windows 10 will prove its worth in the end too. Right now, it is sort of like the early days of Windows 7 where everyone wanted to just keep using Windows XP. Once Windows 7 loses long term support in the next four years, Windows 10 will probably be the hero everyone moves to.

Just as a fun little point of interest to add in, if you watch the OSes, you will see every other OS Microsoft produces is good. Has been that way for a while oddly enough.

Windows 2000 (Good - B+)
Windows ME (Bad - D-)
Windows XP (Good - A+)
Windows Vista (Eh, not so bad but not good - C)
Windows 7 (Good - A)
Windows 8 (Bad - F)
Windows 10 (Good enough - B+)

 
I still run a now-retired gaming Vista rig as well as on an older laptop for general use. After SP2, Vista was actually a decent OS *if* you had a decent system and not some low end and/or outdated platform. Running 4GB+ RAM made it usable. Below that, it choked. 4GB RAM in 2007 vs. 2GB was like having 16GB today vs. 8GB. Most enthusiast users were running 2GB memory nine years ago.

Windows 8 was rejected as the article states because users did not want a smart phone or tablet touch screen tile experience on their PCs (never mind laptop and desktop touch screens were still not widely available for the masses in 2012). You don't make such a radical alien change like that to the consumer, and MS failed miserably trying to push something on someone they didn't want. Win10 is what Win8 should have been and I took the free Win7->Win10 upgrade on my newer laptop and really like it.
 
This is my standpoint from useing the oses

3.1 was crap, felt horrible, potentially good for its time, but using a mac we had in the school was better then 3.1

95 even on a fresh install was crash prone
98 could maintain a 3 day boot at fresh, barely maintained hours a year or so later
me was about as crash prone as 95 was
never had win 2000 crash on me
xp could maintain a month of uptime at fresh install, and petter out to about 3 days after a year, never had an install of xp last more then 1/5 years
win vista had problems with every single aspect of the os, from change for change sake to being a nightmare to use and the always fun nightmare of playing a game on it, it got significantly better when hardware caught up, but my god was this bad before... arguably by the time 7 came out vista was better then it.
7 i have only installed once, around... I want to say 5 or 6 years ago, and it STILL maintains uptimes of months or only shutting down when I want it to (power out too)
win 8 for a desktop user stand point was was to much change for change sake, and offered me next to nothing worth putting up with its bs.
win 10, if it wasn't for the spyware aspect, would be the os I use, but as it stands, I cant use it as a main os, and will only dual boot it for the sake of dx12, still looking for a way to virtual os 10 so i never have to turn win 7 off, an entire lifetime of every os dying because i turned the computer off makes me very hesitant to ever do that.
 
I recall Win2k being pretty reliable. I might've gotten over 1 year of continuous uptime, with it. I was probably on WinXP, by the time I got there. Win7 would definitely do it, though I have to bring it down for certain updates.

ECC RAM makes me feel better about using "sleep". Otherwise, stored bits do have a tendency to flip. On that note, does anyone remember this?

http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/24190-microsoft-to-encourage-use-of-ecc-memory-for-vista

Of course, PC vendors were like "LOL" and kept targeting ECC as a niche professional/enterprise feature. Intel drove in the final nail to the coffin of ECC's mainstream potential, when its core-i series excluded ECC support from virtually all i5's, i7's, Pentiums, and Celerons. In fairness, I recognize that most people don't use ECC and (usually) seem to do quite alright. I still love my socket-AM3 ASUS M4A89TD mobo for its Patrol Scrub feature. Best low-cost server build, EVAR!

At work, I once spent two days debugging a software crash that turned out to be caused by bad RAM. Luckily, most of our machines are servers that come equipped with it by default.
 
"Windows 3.0 quickly outshined its predecessors" Seriously?! Horrible grammar! It's "outshone" Michael Sexton I assume you went to school?
 
Offering corrections is one thing, but don't be an @$$ about it. Definitely earns my down-vote, irrespective of the merits of your claim.

And if I had to choose between better grammar and spelling vs. content, the content would win every time.
 
As I recall Windows (xxall of them) was always unfinished and required constant updates to be downloaded. I can't believe that a major product was so defective that all these updates were required. I still run XP64 bit on one machine as a few weeks ago when shutting it off, it downloaded a fix before turning off, even though it's supposed to be a dead product.
Truly unbelievable and half-as*ed.
 


You are confusing regular Windows updates with enhancement and improvement updates (service packs). Win98, XP, Win7, and Win10 were excellent out of the gate. An operating system is dynamic and requires constant tweaking to keep up with new software, new hardware technology, and new security threats. Further, even with all the beta testing in the world, not everything can or ever will be caught before going gold.

Who in their right mind expects a new OS to never have any updates or service pack improvements years into the future? Now if you want to talk about games being released prematurely and broken, then that's another topic altogether.

 

Agreed. We Don't need Grammar Nazis here.
 
I'm still using it.too. I think a lot of people still are. Have had no problems (pro 64 bit with 16 GB ram).
Are there any non-microsoft sites offering support help?
 


I think he meant "Widely used" not "Big League"
 


 
Well, here's what I can find:
Bigly \Big"ly\, adv. [From Big, a.]
In a tumid, swelling, blustering manner; haughtily; violently.

He brawleth bigly. --Robynson
(More's Utopia. )
[1913 Webster]
Click to expand...
So, it would seem that you used it incorrectly, or at least inconsistently with that definition.

Tom42 is onto something: "widely" would be correct. Doctors who are still running XP are certainly not doing so in a tumid, swelling, blustering manner.
 
1. Billy Gates basically steals DOS from IBM
2. Billy copies Apple there was another back then too that had a window/icon interface before M$.
3. MS tries to monopoly the browser market with XP by tying IE to the OS at the kernel level.
4. MS is suid by many states and FED for being monopoly then MS makes backroom deal with government and charges dropped.
5 Revealed MS worked with NSA on Vista OS
6 MS has been a fascist FED lackey ever since.
 


Microsoft acquired what would become MS-DOS from a smaller company. It didn't steal it from anyone, and IBM licensed that OS from Microsoft.

I don't think having squares on a screen really should be counted as coping others. I've never seen a GUI that didn't either have square windows on screen. Unless you count OSes like Android, which then either have square/rectangular icons and widgets and launch everything in full-screen mode.

It's true that Microsoft has at times attempted to operate essentially as a monopoly and force competitors out of the market, but to some degree that is what a business is supposed to do. We do need to guard against it, but we can't really be surprised when a company attempts to become a monopoly.
 


If you define stole as, what in hind-sight, was sold for too little money... then I can see "stole" apply.

Stole could potentially apply to the OS/2 code, but the partnership and its terms with IBM might avoid the legal definition.

Fortunately for MS, the legal definition of "stole" hasn't been able to be applied, outside of what was better defined as monopolistic practices.

 


What utter nonsense. So you are blaming MS for buying a program from a smaller operation and it wasn't a "fair" deal because MS turned it into something better? Then what would have been a "fair" deal to you back then? Please give a specific number in current adjusted US dollars for relevance. The seller could have mandated any royalties for X amount of years. They did not.

What's next down the road? Complaints that Google paid too little for Youtube ($1.5 billion) at the time ten years ago? Complaints that DirecTV paid too little for LifeShield down the road as AT&T looks to expand it? The possibilities are endless in hindsight "deals." All that matters is that the deals were signed and both parties were happy with the deal. What, do you want the government to step in the middle of deals now?

Oh and speaking of monopolies, since when have OS X and Linux not been capable and successful alternatives to Windows/PC?
 
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