Screenshot History of Windows 793
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."
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
Progression (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Progression (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Progression (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:silly remark (Score:4, Insightful)
Silly remark indeed.
Re:silly remark (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Progression (Score:5, Informative)
Plug 'n Play - Nod to OS/2 for having the same feature, but Win95 is responsible for bringing it to the masses. There were, as expected, a few bugs, but in most cases the hardware was properly detected and configured without the user lifting a finger. Think of Win95 as the working, but basic PnP, whereas Windows 2k / XP with ACPI are the best it ever needs to be.
Built-in easy networking (IPX/TCP/Etc.) -
Come on folks. Linux was a pain in the ass for years to configure to talk to anything, unless you already knew how. In Windows, it was as simple as opening an applet, and selecting the protocol / service. Better still, most Dialup / Network adapters AUTOMATICALLY installed the protocols and services you needed, so no user interaction necessary.
No, it wasn't perfect. But time doesn't stand still, and in terms of features Win95 was an excellent starting point for things to come. Both features mentioned above ( simple networking, PnP ) have been nearly perfected in 2k/XP.
Re:Progression (Score:3, Interesting)
MacOS had plug'n'play in 1986, with the introduction of the MacII. Not to mention dual monitors, which Windows finally added in what, 1999?
Built in easy networking: AppleTalk in 1984, Ethernet in 87 or thereabouts. Or whenever cards started coming out for it.
And BTW, Windows STILL hasn't got Shortcuts right; they still break when you move the original doc. MacOS has had that since about 1994, I think.
I realize Windows dominates things but TRY to give credit in the PC worl
Re:Progression (Score:5, Insightful)
They still bust heads better than just about anything. Lack of revolution just might be a *good* thing.
The great thing about computers though, especially one running Linux, is that it's fairly easy ( in the comparitive sense) for anybody who has a better idea to impliment it.
Have you thought up the new, revolutionary interface that will sweep everything else away before it?
Neither have I, so that's ok. Neither has anybody else.
There a few competing graphical interfaces, and a few command line interfaces, that pretty much seem to cover the bases of people's preferences, and they all approach optimum to one degree or another and direct mind control is still science fiction.
Get used to it. It's going to be like this for a while.
KFG
Re:Progression (Score:5, Funny)
Nonsense. Hammers aren't a bit like they were in Thor's day. Thor's hammer was able to fly and respond to commands, whereas all today's junk can do is hit things.
Pah. They don't make 'em like they used to...
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Progression (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, but it's a non-flyer so far...
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Progression (Score:5, Funny)
You have obviuosly never ever used a pneumatic hammer with 100 nail magazine!
I used one when i built my house and it saved me both thumbs and half the time.
Maybe windows is the (sigh, spelling sucks) equivalent (did i get that right?) of an old hammer and the rest of us is waiting and working towards the pneumatic hammer?
(then again i have rarely seen a hammer fail as often as windows. Come to think of it, Microsoft is to windows what a hammer is to glass!
Re:Progression (Score:4, Funny)
mirror of first 10 pages (Score:5, Informative)
here [soggytrousers.net]
the "skip to page number" at bottom of pages don't work - you'll need to hit back on your browser
Re:Progression (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, and as we all know Evolution is a Linux application
windoze schmidoze (Score:2, Insightful)
windows user interface has ALWAYS been prettier than that. even if it always has been pretty damned ugly.
Wordstar? (Score:3, Interesting)
That was a great program that started many of the flag based text editing programs to date. All of the commands were at the bottom of the screen and it was relatively easy to use. I really thought that was a good program.
Yechh... (Score:2, Funny)
A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)
You know who you are!
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)
Burned-in pattern (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Burned-in pattern (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Burned-in pattern (Score:3, Informative)
You might also check out the Customizing Mozilla [mozilla.org] page at Mozilla.org [mozilla.org].
^x is cut in Windows (Score:4, Funny)
cut - save - crash
omg where's my work, it was there when I saved it
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:3, Informative)
Good idea. I periodically copy my 'work' directory to CD-Rw for short term backup purposes. (I also us CD-R for long term backups.) This has saved me at least once as well.
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, it went beep beep bee...... Oh, Never mind. I've switched already.
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously though, I remember working on our Token-Ring (or whatever it was) equipped early Wintel based systems at the library on papers (before I bought my first Macintosh), and someone would yell, "MY Computer crashed!". And then everyone would frantically be saving their files to disk before the crash propegated itself through the network systematically crashing everyone's computer. The entire network would then have to be rebooted and God help the poor soul who had submitted his paper to the print que without saving it.
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Insightful)
Your going to to mention "Blue Screen" one day and no one will know what you are talking about. I have not seen one for over a year now, as the releases progress, Windows is getting more stable. You have to find a different way to poke fun at the man-in-the-glasses.
Ayjay...
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure I'll be laughing from my Mac when a virus is released that exploits a hole in MSs' DRM system and makes it so you can't back up you own files. he he he.
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:3, Interesting)
I would have said the same thing the other day, but I recently received a blue screen in Win2k by plugging an analog monitor into my laptop. After that the machine wouldn't boot, even with the monitor disconnected. Had to remove the video driver (in safe mode) and reboot. Suddenly everything worked, with both monitors connected...
Note that the blue screen showed on bot
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Informative)
- An event notification in the NT Event Log
- A carbon copy of the bluescreen data at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson\
- System crash dump (choice of small/kernel/complete) at %systemroot%\memory.dmp
- user process space dump at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson\user.dmp
Run drwtsn32.exe to see some of these options, additionally, right-click my computer, advanced tab, startup and recovery options.
Additionally, Windows does not have "automatically reboot" enabled by default. Either you or your administrator chose to enable that behaviour.
Enough of the "bah, windows 2000 doesn't do this, nor that" banter. RTFM (yes, I know there is no manual, F1 it mate) or, ATFM "ask the f*ing adminstrator".
- Oisin
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, except that when the system will not boot at all (command line, safe mode, etc all result in the auto-reboot) I can't view any of that stuff. Microsoft's solution involved a parallel install of Win2k to be able to fix the existing install. Because of course you need the GUI tools to fix it.
Perhaps it may have been possible to use the "Recovery Console" to obtain some of the crash data -- but why the hell couldn't the blue screen just pause for a second before rebooting?
Additionally, Windows does not have "automatically reboot" enabled by default.
Sorry, but Windows 2000 Professional "Upgrade", purchased 2/17/2000 (day it was released I believe), does in fact enable this by default. Trust me, it's enabled by default.
Enough of the "bah, windows 2000 doesn't do this, nor that" banter.
I didn't say I didn't like Windows 2000 -- the reason I'm using it is because I do like it. Win2k offered a lot of stability and reliability that Windows did not have previously. But there are still things that are just plain stupid about it. Windows will not boot without a video card *and* valid driver for it. If the driver won't initialize -- BSOD. Card not present? Not sure what it would do, but I am sure it won't be useful.
In my opinion, much as I do like Windows (2000 and up), it's a desktop OS, and nothing more. But that's beside the point...
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:4, Informative)
Actually you're getting a blue screen, but Win2k defaults to "Reboot Automatically" in the event of a blue screen error. This is bad, in my opinion; I lost a system (had to reinstall) over a problem I never did figure out.
Microsoft's solution? Install another copy of Win2k to a different partition or folder, hack the old Win2k registry to disable the auto-reboot feature. I just reinstalled...
Ever since, that's the first thing I do: disable auto-reboot (System Properties -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery).
I did recently have a blue screen. I plugged into my laptop, of all things, a monitor. An analog monitor. Got a blue screen. I had to boot safe mode, uninstall the video driver, and it just fixed itself (how the hell do you run a headless Windows server if it won't even boot without a video driver?)
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:4, Funny)
As i'm typing now, the guy next to me's Word 2002 just crashed on Windows XP, with his computing coursework in it! Looks like it's still happening today
Re:What's a 'Blue Screen'?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember most of those screens (Score:4, Funny)
Seveal years back I tried to uncover some from Windows 1 and 2 but could never track them down.
I have a softspot in my heart for early windows...
Then again, when Windows 1 through 3 were out, I was on Apples, Amiga and my trusty TI-99.
It only goes as far as 3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
(in denial)
Re:It only goes as far as 3.11 (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty accurate portrayal of the windows legacy IMO.
Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Funny)
Then came the awful, awful WinXP interface which inspires my stomach to empty its contents every time my eyes are exposed to the neon primary color mix that comes as the default.
I'm sure many Windows XP fans will reply saying I can theme/skin the thing, but for all the billions in the bank and all the money M$ supposedly spent on testing the interface, that was the best default they could come up with? And people complain that Linux GUI's suck... sheesh.
Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, time and time again has shown that your average user doesn't like flashy colors and gimics such as transparent cases and such...
Oh wait.
Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Funny)
See... eventually, the Windows user experience will look a little something like this [fisherprice.com]
Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Funny)
For the exact same reasons, I always think of Lego Duplos whenever I see the default WinXP interface. Years ago some guy stated something to effect of "build a system a 5-year old can use, and only 5-year olds will want to". It was intended to bash the Mac then, but I think it goes for interfaces too - "build an interface that pleases a 5-year old, and only a 5-year old will want to use it".
Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:3, Insightful)
While Windows XP can be set back to the default appearance, I wish there was a way to deal with all the icons and applications (like the latest version of AIM) that seem to copycat the default uber-cheerful pastel scheme. I want less Prozac in my UI, damnit.
Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget about WindowBlinds [windowblinds.net] by Stardock [stardock.com], which is a much better Windows interface changer than the built-in visual style system. While you must pay for WindowBlinds it is well worth it!
DeviantART's interface is pretty bad, though (Score:4, Informative)
Take a look at kaleidoscope.net [kaleidoscope.net] for an example of the ideal way to do this -- script-generated standard layout within thumbnail, so it's easy to compare multiple themes. The thumbnail is not scaled, and the image is a gif (admittedly, png would be better), instead of a jpg -- with themes, a "crisp" appearance and color matters. While jpg may be lovely for photographs, it's awful for evaluating how attractive a theme is, particularly if there are hard edges. With themes, often individual pixels matter, so jpg or scaling really ruins the theme's effect.
I agree that WindowBlinds is much better than the native theme system on Windows, but WindowBlinds also adds a good deal of slowdown to redraw.
Re:DeviantART's interface is pretty bad, though (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:4, Interesting)
And does it look like Aqua or am I imagining things?
NonBloated (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re:NonBloated (Score:3, Informative)
Re:NonBloated (Score:5, Informative)
Windows 1.01 (files dated November 1985) - 5 360K floppies - 1,598K
Windows 2.03 (November 1987) - 9 360K floppies - 3,540K
Windows 3.0 (October 1990) - 7 720K floppies - 5,423K
Windows for Workgroups v3.11 (November 1993) - 8 1.44MB floppies - 12,215K
Windows 95 v4.00.950 (July 1995) - 34,621K
Windows 95 v4.00.950B (May 1997) - 45,169K
Re:NonBloated (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:NonBloated (Score:3, Insightful)
They missed one (Score:3, Funny)
A never released version of windows* [traskmicrosystems.com]
*of maybe it was - you decide
win95..... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:win95..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:eh, wot? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:win95..... (Score:3, Insightful)
And
I wouldn't exactly say it's any kind of leap in UI development.
Lots and lots of people used Windows 3.1 for a long time. If it was unusable, people wouldn't have used it. Back then, it wasn't quite a monopoly yet, although that's about the time when they started using shadey business practices to force manufacturers to put Windows on PC's that ship, and nothing else.
Re:win95..... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right it wasn't a great leap for UIs, but it was a huge leap for Windows. The fact that many people think a huge leap for Windows represents a huge leap for UIs in general shows that most people are still unaware that Microsoft is not the center of the computing Universe, nor is it, in any sense an innovator.
It is possible for a program to be "usable" and yet still horrible to use. This is what Windows was prior to Win9x.
heh. slashdotted already (Score:5, Funny)
You know, this was a lot funnier BEFORE I went to netcraft.
Re:heh. slashdotted already (Score:3, Informative)
mod_bwlimited/1.0 PHP/4.3.1
Looks like it's working perfectly. They probably have to pay through the nose to their hosting company if throughput exceeds some arbitrary limit.
from the article (Score:5, Funny)
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 . . .
Screenshots are originally from... (Score:5, Informative)
And second, wasn't this posted here like a week ago?
Re:Screenshots are originally from... (Score:5, Informative)
kind of true (Score:5, Informative)
Bill was a Xenix evangelist, even putting it on the desks of the secretaries if the stories are true.
See here [theregister.co.uk]
and here [microsoft.com]
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.
The lies prepetuated (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have your old copy of Windows 95 System Programming Secrets (1995, Matt Pietrek) [amazon.com] 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.
Re:The lies prepetuated (Score:5, Funny)
It's a 32-bit patch to a 16-bit extension to an 8-bit operating system originally written for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.
Re:The lies prepetuated (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true, but for the time it was the right thing.
You could run Win95, and do useful work with it, on a PC with 4 MB of RAM. More was better; I ran it with 8 MB. (In 1995, RAM was expensive!)
Part of the reason it was small was because of the stupid thunking into DOS. DOS is small, partly because it started out small and partly because lots of people hacked on it over the years trying to keep it small. (DOS 4 was an exception, but the MS DOS guys were quick to point out that IBM made DOS 4. DOS 5, done by MS, was actually smaller than DOS 4, despite having many improvements.)
Also, Win95 had lots of 16-bit code inherited from Win 3.1, and it thunked into that a lot. Again, this contributed to the small size.
I'm glad that machines are so powerful these days, where 128 MB of RAM is considered a small amount. But part of Win95's success was that it actually ran on the machines of the day.
steveha
Re:The lies prepetuated (Score:3, Informative)
That's true, but for the time it was the right thing.
Neither DOS nor Windows 9x were ever "the right thing". We are talking mid-90's here. UNIX was more than 20 years old, people were using 3D user interfaces on SGIs, you could get Sun workstations for $2000, Smalltalk was nearly two decades old. You could even get better open source 16bit operating systems at the time.
Windows 9x was purely a way of squeezing lots of money out
Re:The lies prepetuated (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, indeed. There is a good chance that without Microsoft or Intel, the computers we sit at today would have better processors, better programming environments, better usability, and better end-user software. Microsoft and Windows have held back the industry and technology by at least a decade.
the wintel alliance has brought us a revolution in
I feel old. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Most popular app (Score:5, Funny)
A screen saver! (After Dark)
Official Microsoft Story (Score:5, Informative)
including horrible coloured screenshots
Rus
Can someone post the keygen for Windows 1.0? PLZ (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, the days before bloat.
Used them? I have to program for some of them! (Score:3, Interesting)
What about us poor schmucks who have to keep our programs compatible to the 95/98/Me family, while still integrating a "modern XP look" (blech) for marketing? Don't we get some sympathy?
Microsoft Layer for Unicode, here I come...
Timelines... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Timelines... (Score:3, Informative)
Not even close. When MS heard that IBM was designing the PC, and looking for an OS for it, they bought a dinky little OS that nobody had ever heard of called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), which was itself an x86 hack/clone of the popular CP/M operating system, and made some changes to it so that it would run on a PC.
IBM had been hoping to use actual CP/M, but the company that made it, Intergalactic Digital Research (the I
So easy to bash the past... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
this is like one of those TV flashbacks (Score:5, Funny)
the end.
just kidding, actually my father reinstalled the system, and eventually we got it working.
Jesus (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Windows 95 (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the author pulled this straight out of Microsoft's propaganda. I don't know what qualify Windows 95 as a 32-bit OS.
Windows 95 cannot perform preemptive multitasking when 16-bit applications are running. Therefore if you plan to use mostly older 16-bit applications, you should not expect to see productivity improvements. There are also times when Windows 95 cannot multitask 32-bit applications. Windows 95 uses older 16-bit code for two very important modules( Window management and Graphics Device Interface). When an application needs to use these modules, they have to wait in line until the previous application gives up control, the operating system cannot preempt it. If a 32-bit application needs to use one of these two modules, it may have to wait for it. That application is not able to multitask while it waits. In addition, 16-bit applications can inhibit the multitasking related performance of the 32-bit applications. When you run a mix of 16-bit and 32-bit applications, Windows 95 resorts to a less sophisticated form of multitasking called cooperative multitasking.
You see, 'pure 32-bit OS mode' will never happen.
Re:Windows 95 (Score:4, Informative)
Your statements are not based on fact.
Choice... (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, well, if having it violently shoved onto your future computer by its manufacturer...
Or if having to pirate a copy because you can't afford it and for some God-awful reason you need to hone your l337 haxor sk177Z on it because UNIX is just too easy...
Of if you actually bought it because a winmodem is your only ticket online. If that all in some convoluted way constitutes choice, then yes, we "adopted" Windows.
Misguided sarcasm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, there has been a lot of sarcasms in the previous posts regarding the slashdotted site. But checking with www.netcraft.com [netcraft.com] one sees their server's setup:
"The site www.neowin.net is running Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) mod_log_bytes/1.0 mod_bwlimited/1.0 PHP/4.3.1 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 mod_ssl/2.8.12 OpenSSL/0.9.7 on Linux."
Amiga OS history (Score:4, Interesting)
Didn't get a chance to see the pictures, server is slashdotted. So I did a quick googling around and found a nice site that shows the history of the AmigaOS. http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/index.html [gregdonner.org]
I had forgot just how nasty Workbench 1.x's colours where. Makes XP look friendly *g*
/. anti-Windows bigotry? (Score:4, Funny)
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!
Fun Game - aftermarket metaphores (Score:3, Funny)
1) First Aid - Windows is a sick person hemorraging blood and needs 'first aid' while waiting for the 'doctor' or ambulance. It is also succeptible to 'viruses' and diseases. Adherents to this metaphone often say, "My computer is sick!"
2) Oil Change - Windows is an automobile that need regular perodic 'maintenance', as if there were metal parts in there rubbing together and need lubricant. They also often need a cheap muffler, tire rotation, etc. See Also "Tune Up". Adherents to this metaphone say their computer is "In the shop" being repaired, or "Hey Jim! Put 'er up on the rack again - the transmission's still acting up!".
3) Power Tools - Windows is a decrepit old house that just needs a little 'fixing up' and 'sweat equity' to fix the drafty windows, broken stair steps, etc. This metaphore suggests a 'do it yourself' person more willing to tinker with their system than the Sick Human or Broken Automobile metaphore, who must call a Dr. or mechanic. But sometimes users of 'power tools' just make things worse and have to call in a 'contractor' to reinstall a whole new house.
Windows 1.0 on a floppy (Score:3, Interesting)
Runs nicely in VMWARE.
Remember this *IS* history folks... (Score:4, Interesting)
I had Gem [geocities.com] 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!
Re:Man... what a garbage it was (like 1, 2, and 3) (Score:5, Insightful)
If you make make your app run nicely on that configuration, then have 15 years of development for improvement, then you might have something.
Re:Man... what a garbage it was (like 1, 2, and 3) (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, did anyone else have a Tandy 1000, or specifically the 1000/TL? It was actually pretty sharp back in the day, and may have been the last custom computer Radio Scrap offered. It had the oper
Looks ripped. (Score:3, Informative)
The screens are from The GUI Gallery [toastytech.com], and the author even says he "picked them up" from the net.
Re:Damn (Score:4, Funny)
You will also notice a funny-looking lower-case 'e' somewhere. This is special software for your computer. Very special. Time-warp forward about three months. The blue square is now an annoying set of green tiles with gold trim, or a wierdly-distorted picture of someone's wife and kids. But it doesn't really matter because just about all you can see are random icons scattered haphazardly all over the place. Most of them came as a result of the funny 'e' software, and they are named things like "pics.scr" and "Brittney_SPears.mp3.exe. None of them do anything when you click on them, so you naturally download another to see if you can make that one work, too. But I digress...
Pretty much, that's the look of the thing after 3.1, at least until XP. To get a picture of XP in your head, you first have to be familiar with the gumdrop look of Mac OS X, which came before XP. Then, while holding the OS X desktop in your mind, send in some Tellytubbies, and have them run around, say gibberish, point to their belly buttons, and while they're at it, customize the desktop and control buttons very slightly to suit their own, um, needs. That's Windows XP, in a nutshell.
The preceeding comments were brought to you by the letter G and the Number 3.
in response to your automatic windows zeal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:2003 server (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Inaccuracies (Score:5, 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.
Re:Inaccuracies (Score:3, Informative)
You could only run 32-bit programs with the Win32S (yes, there's an S on there) addon. Most programs didn't use it.
4GB of RAM? Really, that's quite astonishing, considering that not even Windows 95 supported that much.
DOS programs in V86 mode? I'll give you
Re:Preemtive DOS Multitasking (Score:3, Informative)