Microsoft Windows/History
In 1985, Microsoft released the
first version of Windows, a GUI (graphic user
interface) for their own operating system (MS-DOS) that had been shipped
with IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. The GUI was modeled after Apple's MacOS.
This first version of Microsoft Windows wasn't very powerful nor very popular. Microsoft Windows 2 came out in 1987, and was a bit more popular that the original
version. The first really popular version of Windows was version 3.0, released in 1990. This benefited from the improved graphics available on PC's by this time, and also
from the 80386 processor which allowed 'true' multitasking of the Windows applications. This made it more efficient and more reliable when running more than one piece of
software at a time. It would even allow you to run and multitask older MS-DOS based software. Windows 3 made the IBM PC a serious piece of competition for the Apple
Mac. Various revisions - Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.11 were released, although they didn't really provide many significant improvements to the way Windows looked
or worked.
Also available at a similar time to Windows 3 was IBM's OS/2 (which was actually written in partnership with Microsoft). OS/2 Warp was also released which was a full 32
bit operating system - it came out long before Windows 95, and boasted many similar features. Unfortunately IBM failed to market it successfully enough and it didn't catch
on.
Windows 95 was released in 1995 (no surprises there) in August. Although it shared much code with Windows 3 and even MS-DOS, Windows 95 had 2 big advantages.
First, it was an entire Operating System, you no-longer needed to buy MS-DOS and then install Windows on top of it. Second it was specially written for 80386 and better
processors and made 'full' use of the 32 bit facilities. In this respect Windows 95 moved closer to Windows NT.
Windows NT (New Technology) was developed alongside Windows for use on servers and businesses. It is designed to be more reliable and secure than Windows 95, but
as a trade-off it is less compatible with older MS-DOS based software (crucially for the home market it won't run many video games).
1998 (June 25) saw the release of Windows 98, which is very similar to Windows 95, except that it provided a new method of storing data on disks, a method that is more
efficient and that supports disks larger than the 2 GB allowed by the first release of Windows 95.
It was Microsoft's aim - with Windows 2000 - to merge the two versions of Windows (Windows 95/8 and Windows NT) into one product, but they failed. Because of the
memory protection, Windows 2000 is unable to run some of the legacy software (imparticular games) that the Windows 9x series can - so Windows Millenium Edition
(ME) was born. Windows 2000 is basically NT 5 with a slightly prettier interface, and Windows ME is the latest in the 95/98 family.
See History of computing.