Microsofts History unleashed
Microsoft: The Company It wouldn’t be fair to talk about the Windows Operating System without first looking at the origins of the company that developed it. William H. Gates III and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975. They were both only 19 years old. In 1980 International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) chose Microsoft to write the operating system for the IBM PC personal computer, to be introduced the following year. As part of its contract with IBM, Microsoft was permitted to license the operating system to other companies. By 1984 Microsoft had licensed MS-DOS to 200 personal computer manufacturers, making MS-DOS the standard operating system for personal computers. In 1985 Microsoft released Windows, an operating system that extended the features of MS-DOS and employed a graphical user interface. In 1990 Microsoft became the first personal-computer software company to record $1 billion in annual sales. As Microsoft’s dominance grew in the market for personal-computer operating systems, the company was accused of monopolistic business practices. Windows Windows is a personal computer operating system sold by Microsoft Corporation that allows users to enter commands with a point-and-click device, such as a mouse, inst
ead of a keyboard. Windows provides users with a graphical user interface (GUI), which allows them to manipulate small pictures, called icons, on the computer screen to issue commands. Windows is the most widely used operating system in the world. Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985. Version 1.0 enabled users to work with several programs at the same time, switching easily between them without having to quit and restart individual applications. But windows on Windows 1.0 were tiled, or presented next to each other rather than overlapping, crippling usability. Not enough software was written for Windows 1.0, and it failed to take hold in the marketplace. Windows version 2.0, introduced in 1987, was designed to resemble IBM’s OS/2 Presentation Manager, another GUI operating system. Windows version 2.0 used a system of overlapping windows rather than the tiled windows scheme of the previous version. 2.0 could also utilize protected mode on 80286 systems or better, allowing programs to break out of the DOS 640K program size barrier. In June 1988, when Version 2.1 was released, it was renamed windows 286. Windows version 3.0 was released on May 22, 1990, and had significant usability improvements. The Program Manager and the icon setup worked much better than the old Windows versions. Developer enhancements on this version kick-started the Windows software boom. Stability was less than ideal, but version 3.0 and subsequent versions 3.1 and 3.11 rapidly made Windows the market leader in operating systems for personal computers. Part of the reason for this was because it came prepackaged on new personal computers. It also became the favored platform for software development. On May 24, 1993, Microsoft introduced Windows NT, which stands for New Technology. Though it is more commonly referred to as Not Today, No Thanks, and Nice Try. The Windows NT operating system offers 32-bit multitasking, which gives a computer the ability to run several
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