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Screenshot History of Windows
jobugeek writes "Neowin has an article that shows the progression of Microsoft Windows from pre-windows 1.0 through the 2003 server. For those of you who have used all of them, I'm sorry."
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There's been no real revolution since win95... just evolution. Will revolution happen anytime soon?
What they need is a history of windows blue screens....and photos of frustrated 4th year students who lose 3 hours worth of work, 2 hours before there final papers are due.
You know who you are!
Hey, at least the bloat hadn't yet set in. I have a few versions of Windows archived away here just because they don't take up too much room.
Win 1.0 is a 244k zip file.
Win 2.0 really went overkill and that's where the bloat set in I'm afraid. 667kb. What do people need all that for anyway?
looking at all of them one thing really
strikes you, win95 was quite a leap.
till then it really was not close to
a usable desktop. win95 was the racehorse...
22 comments on the story, and the site is already experiencing the full force of the /. effect. I wonder what OS that server's running? Oh. Well, that blows my theory out of the water.
You know, this was a lot funnier BEFORE I went to netcraft.
In regards to windows 1.0:
It took 55 programmers one year to develop this program.
And 500 slashdotters 20 minutes to overload neowin's server looking at screenshots of an OS we all supposedly loath . . .
First, many of the screens from the article appear to have been taken from The GUI Gallery, which is kinda lame since it's basically just a copy of that site anyway. The author even says that he "picked them up" from the internet. :P
And second, wasn't this posted here like a week ago?
If you make make your app run nicely on that configuration, then have 15 years of development for improvement, then you might have something.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
If you have your old copy of Windows 95 System Programming Secrets (1995, Matt Pietrek) handy, he has some examples of how those pesky Int 21 calls (DOS services) are still thunked down to that crappy old DOS layer, instead of being completely handled in the kernal, as in WinNT. If there was truely no DOS, there would be no thunking, no crappy DOS layer, and no MSDOS.SYS/IO.SYS/COMMAND.COM garbage.
Microsoft's marketing machine tried (and mostly managed) to convince the world that 'DOS is dead' with this version of Windows. Rumor has it that BillG got totally hacked off by an Apple commerical that compared booting a Mac with booting a WIntel box, and told his minions that the next version (95) better boot right to Windows.
Yeah, right.
The first time I was introduced to Windows, I was using a Tandy 1000RLX. For those of you who didn't follow the history of Tandy's 1000 series, it basically started with the original 1000 and went something like this... RGEG@#3t232tG@#g@#G23#%#@^!@^grsg
Yea, that's about as much sense as it made - the 1000 moniker was absolutely useless for determining what kind of system it was. So anyway, as it turns out, the 1000RLX was an XT-286. Yep, while other 286s had a 16-bit bus and 16-bit ISA slots... My crappy Tandy didn't. What it did have was a 10MHz AMD 286 chip on an 8-bit bus with 256k VGA graphics, 1MB of RAM, a 1.44MB floppy drive and an XT-IDE 40MB hard drive. It also had one 8-bit ISA slot that I decided to cram a 2400bps modem into.
So anyway, I certainly didn't have the hardware for Windows 3.0 and while I don't remember the exact date, I do remember Windows 3.1 was just about to come out in a few months... So it was back in the day. I got ahold of a copy of Windows 3.0 and installed it on that Tandy and guess what - my mouse didn't work.
I called tech support (you could actually reach a live person back in the day!) for the Tandy computer... They kinda wondered where I got a copy of Windows from (since the computer didn't come with it, it came with Tandy's Deskmate) but instead of telling me "No, we don't support operating systems that didn't come bundled... blah blah blah" like you'd expect to hear today - they were actually helpful and explained that this XT-286 had the PS/2 mouse port on a non standard IRQ and I'd need to get a serial mouse.
To make a long story longer, I waited awhile for 3.1 to be released and ended up pawning off the computer on my father and convinced him to buy me a Tandy 2500SX/25 instead... So not only could I run the new Windows 3.1 with a mouse, I also could run it in 386 protected mode with a whopping 2MB of ram and an 80MB hard drive. From what I remember of Windows 3.1, it was always very slow and it seemed to crash a lot and every few weeks or so it managed to crash badly enough to corrupt itself. Blue screens nowadays make me feel all nolstalgic.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I think it's quite telling that for several years the biggest-selling and most popular application for Windows was what?
A screen saver! (After Dark)
You can read the official M$ story of the windows history at microsoft.com :)
including horrible coloured screenshots
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I haven't used MS-Windows/MS-Office in years and I still have the reflex to hit Ctrl-S at the end of each sentence or any time I pause for a moment while typing.
Usually, I catch it in time to abstract it to "Save" and use the correct short cut. But being a reflex it unfortunately still kicks in sometimes as Ctrl-S ... even in Bash or vi.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Ah, the days before bloat.
here
the "skip to page number" at bottom of pages don't work - you'll need to hit back on your browser
Here's a Windows Timeline list of each MS OS and its date. Also, includes the current future OS'.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Why back in the middle ages get this..they used swords! Those fools! Why didn't they just use guns!
Programmers today have no clue what programming was like back in the early days of the PC. The system had to boot in 64k, which is equivilant to a few icons in todays world. The graphics technology was so primitive most programmers today would refuse to write code for it; the pixels weren't square and there was no screen read!
Yet the functionality was substantially similar to what we have today; networking, graphics, spreadsheets, word processors with fonts.
Put down the early days of windows all you want, twenty years from now you will be defending the "boneheaded code" you wrote in your youth and you may just get a taste of it; though not the full course meal since starting a billion dollar enterprise is much much more difficult than coat-tailing on one.
the end.
just kidding, actually my father reinstalled the system, and eventually we got it working.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
This is the first time I actually noticed the dates on all this software.
Back in the late-eighties/early-nineties I only knew Macs. I had family that worked at Apple so I had access to a lot of stuff. I finally moved over to a PC in 1998, when I got tired of connecting to shell accounts and wanted to get my own unix machine.
Anyway, I can't believe the dates here. I always assumed that Windows 3.1 came out in 87/88, what with the horrible interface and lack of features. I remember playing with a Mac 128k in 1985 that worked better than 3.1, minus the color.
It really makes me wonder what they were thinking at Apple back then, making the machines so expensive rather than trying to take over the market when they had such a lead. It boggles the mind.
[insert witty quote here]
There are zealots everywhere. On Neowin you'll find your fair share of Microsoft zealots, on Slashdot you'll find your fair share of Anti-Microsoft zealots, on an Apple website you'd find your fair share of Apple zealots, etc...
People have their views. Sometimes people's views are based upon a line of logic that that person happens to agree with, and a lot of times people's views are based on other things. The people in the latter category are ignorant. You will find these groups of people everywhere. There is really nothing you can do about it. So I would suggest that you simply get used to it or you are going to have a very hard time in life.
Even you yourself appear to be quite ignorant. This is not necessarily an insult, as I am not attempting to challenge your intelligence. But based upon a lot of comments you made in your post you are very uninformed. Although your last comment pushes you into the arrogant (ignorance mixed with ego) category imho. My purpose in saying this is not to flame bit, but to show you that even you express zealousness. So you might want to be a bit more tolerant when you see others expressing that same quality, or you might come across as a hypocrite to some.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
Who modded this as informative?
Namely that versions of Windows before Win95 didn't fully support the 386
Win 3 supported every feature of the 386 processor. It could run 32 bit code (although most of the code was 16 bit for compatibility). It could run DOS programs in V86 mode. It supported 4Gb of RAM. That's pretty much every 386 feature accounted for.
despite what the article claims, still had worthless (and error-prone) cooperative multi-tasking
The article claims that DOS tasks where pre-emptively multitasked. This is correct. I thought it was true for 2.0/386 as well, though, but I'm not certain, having never actually used that (I only ever used 2.0 on a 186).
nor did they have anything resembling a 32-bit filesystem.
Win3.1 came with a 32 bit filesystem driver. That is, the driver executed as 32 bit code without thunking to DOS. The articles text is ambiguous, and may cause you to think of FAT32, but it does clearly state later that FAT32 was introduced with Win95 OSR2.
"For those of you who have used all of them, I'm sorry."
Errr, why? Not half as sorry as I feel for those who've used X11 since the beginning. Ever got stuck with TWM or FVMW (feeble virtual window manager) or OpenLook? They give me the shudders just thinking of them! FVWM even had a Win95 look on my Slackware distro back in the mid-90's. The difference between them is that you're increasingly unlikely to see older Windows UIs, yet the crap old X11 ones are still active today. My XFree86 under Windows/Cygwin comes with TWM, and I had to suffer TWM on my Linux box the other day when I was compiling a newer version of KDE. Ugh!
Warp 4 was released in 1996 - any copying (window close buttons, start menu, taskbar, etc) was by OS/2 off Win95 (for which MS copied of many other products as well, but Win95 was before Warp4)
Warp3 was more Win3.x-ish.
You must be kidding right. I only wish I had a version installed so I could show a screenshot.
Warp 4 certainly had many design elements of Windows 95, but they were ONLY a start bar type fthing and the X buttons. Those features were available years before in circa 1993 as freeware add-ons. Checkout Filebar and NPS WPS enhancer, from which MS primarily ripped their design concepts.
Many of the core ways that OS/2 worked were ripped from OS/2. A consistently gray GUI provided a much better look and was easier on the eyes. Buttons and bars had the "chiseled" look. MS even ripped the dark green background of OS/2 Warp 3.0. IBM did a whole study and determined that color calms humans better than any other. Lets not forget the absolutely revolutionary tabbed properties dialogue boxes.
OS/2 always had a desktop since 1992, three years before Windows 95. There was no true desktop in Windows prior to 1995.
In reality, the Macintosh had many of these features first. It was always striking how Windows 95 looked so incredibly similar to OS/2 Warp 3. They could easily have incorporated many of the design elements but still have created a unique look.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
It must not be taken out of context
I had Gem on my 8088 (512K, 30Mb HDD) and had a funky graphics card that would do CGA hi-res in 16 colours. So Gem was nice and colourful (though fixed windows, unlike atari Gem).
With first Word Plus and Timeworks DTP, the machine was excellent for doing schoolwork and stuff.
Now this PC I got also came with 2 operating systems, MS-DOS 3.2 and DOS Plus - Due to software compatibility, I tended to use MS-DOS, dos plus was slightly more memory hungry. I made the choice to use MS-DOS because it *was* a better operating system.
I remember windows 2 coming out and being quite excited - I remember starting it up - waiting ages - running in monochrome (it didn't support my weird graphics card) and played othello for about 30 minutes and then uninstalled it. My opinion: windows is a flop. (DOS is still good though!)
I used Windows 3.0 on some machine or other (not mine) and thought that it was a big improvement on 2.0.
I then got my 486 (33MHz w/ 8mb ram) with windows 3.1 installed! Oh-My-God it was *so* good, people talk about the shortcomings, but they either didn't use win3.1 or didn't have powerful enough machines to appreciate it properly.
There were 1 million hacks available for win3.1 to do whatever you wanted (icons on the desktop etc.) and it was skinnable too.
The underlying technology didn't really matter to me, I still played my DOS games in DOS and ran windows when I wanted to do something like use Word - remember word 2 folks? It's almost the same as the current word that we use today - all the elements were in place and it took first place on my machine.
I played with a couple of linux distros around that time or just after (Slackware and a thing called mini-linux that I've never found any references to again). But they just couldn't compete for a desktop experience for me and they didn't run doom!
Nowadays I run mandrake linux on my pc and debian (knoppix) on my laptop because I feel it's time has come.
Look on those old windows shots with the pleasant nostalgia they are intended to invoke. Suppress the anti-M$ urge on this one!
So XP professional (NT 5.1 as it identifies itself) wasn't meant to replace 2000 Professional (NT 5)? And I suppose 2003 won't replace the 2000 server versions.....
Silly remark indeed.
Not a silly remark at all. Microsoft is not aggresively selling Windows XP as a replacement to Windows 2000. Rather they are selling it as the upgrade path to the consumer line (which is the 9x series, Windows ME) and as an upgrade to Windows NT 4.0. If you wanted to upgrade Windows 2000 to Windows XP Microsoft won't stop you but it's not the market that they are aggressively seeking.
Likewise Windows 2003 Server is not being touted as a serious upgrade to Windows 2000 Server. A good deal of the enhancements to Windows 2003 Server specifically address concerns when upgrading from Windows NT 4.0. Microsoft is not pushing this server heavily as a replacement to Windows 2000 Server.
AT&T licensed Unix to OEMs and Microsoft decided to be one of them.
Bill was a Xenix evangelist, even putting it on the desks of the secretaries if the stories are true.
See here
and here
A Snippet of his 1996 speech at Unix Expo
One of the exciting things we're announcing today is that our commitment to the Internet and to building a state-of-the-art browser extends not only to Windows 95 and Windows NT, but also to 16-bit Windows and the Macintosh and to Unix. And so, working with some partners, we've created Internet Explorer 3.0, and that's our latest, with all the active control capabilities on several Unix platforms.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter