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Microsoft

Screenshot History of Windows 793

Posted by michael from the format-c: dept.
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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Screenshot History of Windows More

Screenshot History of Windows

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  • Progression (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:20AM (#5562988)
    There's been no real revolution since win95... just evolution. Will revolution happen anytime soon?

    • Re:Progression (Score:2, Interesting)

      by packeteer ( 566398 )
      Win95 was hardly more of a revolution more than some of the new stuff today. I think the changes between XP and ME (which is replaces) are huge.

      • Re:Progression (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Xrikcus ( 207545 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:10AM (#5563344)
        on the other hand the changes between XP and 2k (which it evolved from) are tiny

      • Re:Progression (Score:5, Informative)

        by default luser ( 529332 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @01:07PM (#5565899) Journal
        Actually, you're forgetting some of the most important aspects that Windows 95 brought to the world.

        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)

          by ChiefPilot ( 566606 )
          You've got to be kidding!

          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)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:37AM (#5563052)
      Hammers haven't changed much since the days of Thor, although they've evolved a bit.

      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

    • mirror of first 10 pages (Score:5, Informative)

      by lizzybarham ( 588992 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:11AM (#5563200)

      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)

      by yaba ( 218529 )
      There's been no real revolution since win95... just evolution.

      Yes, and as we all know Evolution is a Linux application ;-)
  • did anyone ever hyndai or whatever computers? they were only released as an experiment to see how well they worked.. they were cheap as heck and they planned on giving them to school. they could only handle this bad wordprocessing program, "wordstar"

    windows user interface has ALWAYS been prettier than that. even if it always has been pretty damned ugly.

    • Wordstar? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wordstar was bad?
      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)

    by DoctorFrog ( 556179 )
    You don't appreciate how ugly the standard Windows colors are without this kind of perspective.

  • A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:24AM (#5563001)
    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!

    • Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)

      by NewbieProgrammerMan ( 558327 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:31AM (#5563031)
      Wow, people manage to get to their 4th year (of anything that requires even incidental use of Windows) without developing an I - must - press - Ctrl-S - every - 15 - seconds reflex?

      • Burned-in pattern (Score:5, Funny)

        by SgtChaireBourne ( 457691 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:02AM (#5563170) Homepage
        Wow, people manage to get to their 4th year (of anything that requires even incidental use of Windows) without developing an I - must - press - Ctrl-S - every - 15 - seconds reflex?

        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:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:32AM (#5563035) Homepage Journal
      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.

      Yeah, it went beep beep bee...... Oh, Never mind. I've switched already.

    • Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:5, Funny)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:38AM (#5563058) Homepage Journal
      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.

      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, Insightful)

      by ayjay29 ( 144994 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:12AM (#5563349)
      Enjoy your joke while you can.

      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)

        by SoupIsGoodFood_42 ( 521389 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:37AM (#5563419)
        You have to find a different way to poke fun at the man-in-the-glasses.

        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.

      • 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...

        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)

          by x0n ( 120596 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @09:46AM (#5564181) Homepage Journal
          [flamebait]Since noone here really knows anything about Windows[/flamebait], I'd better answer this one -- on the contrary my friend, you _do_ have several logs of the event (details for default install of win2000):

          - 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)

            by sfe_software ( 220870 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @11:10AM (#5564737) Homepage
            ...on the contrary my friend, you _do_ have several logs of the event...

            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)

        by XO ( 250276 )
        funny, we have a few XP machines at work (most are '95) .. the XP machines crash at least 3 times a day, and all they do is run Flash presentations all day long. The '95 boxes that are used as our cash registers have uptimes of months...

    • Re:A crowd Pleaser (Score:4, Funny)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:32AM (#5563402) Homepage Journal
      Hahahaha...

      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 :-)

  • I remember most of those screens (Score:4, Funny)

    by MonkeyPaw ( 8286 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:25AM (#5563003) Homepage
    I still have install disks for Windows 3.0.

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:26AM (#5563006)
    After that, the /. effect kicked in, and so I have no proof that any more windozes exist

    (in denial)

  • Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xpilot ( 117961 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:26AM (#5563007) Homepage
    It was ugly before, then came Win95/98, which made everything an acceptable shade of grey.

    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)

      by Rew190 ( 138940 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:35AM (#5563044)
      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.

      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)

      by inkswamp ( 233692 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:36AM (#5563049)
      I like to think of it as the Fisher-Price interface. Big, primary-colored, rounded, and plastic--just perfect for users prone to poking their eyes out on sharp edges.

      See... eventually, the Windows user experience will look a little something like this [fisherprice.com]

      • Re:Windows just gets uglier (Score:5, Funny)

        by allanj ( 151784 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @08:54AM (#5563982)

        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".

    • 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.

      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.

  • NonBloated (Score:5, Funny)

    by questamor ( 653018 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:27AM (#5563009)
    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?

    • Re:NonBloated (Score:3, Informative)

      by QuMa ( 19440 )
      I doubt you have the full thing then, win 1.0 came on 3 360k floppies, and I doubt it'd compress to 22%.

    • Re:NonBloated (Score:5, Informative)

      by the_cowgod ( 133070 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:28AM (#5563391)
      Here's the contents of the disks I've got:

      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

  • They missed one (Score:3, Funny)

    by traskjd ( 580657 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:27AM (#5563010) Homepage
    Ignoring the fact I made this (mod it down if that's a problem - I don't mind) I think they missed one of the screen shots of early windows -

    A never released version of windows* [traskmicrosystems.com]

    *of maybe it was - you decide :D

  • win95..... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vvikram ( 260064 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:27AM (#5563013)

    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)

      by dabootsie ( 590376 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:40AM (#5563078)
      That would be because W95 borrowed heavily from OS/2 after Microsoft pulled out of their partnership with IBM.

    • Re:win95..... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cbreaker ( 561297 )
      Windows95 has a start button. Woo.

      And .lnk files.

      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)

        by MegaFur ( 79453 )

        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)

    by devlogic ( 109750 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:33AM (#5563039) Homepage
    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. [netcraft.com] Well, that blows my theory out of the water.

    You know, this was a lot funnier BEFORE I went to netcraft.
    • From the Netcraft link:

      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)

    by smylie ( 127178 ) <spam_me@@@smylie...co...nz> on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:40AM (#5563075) Homepage
    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 . . .

  • Screenshots are originally from... (Score:5, Informative)

    by eMartin ( 210973 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:40AM (#5563076)
    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 [toastytech.com]

    And second, wasn't this posted here like a week ago?

    • Re:Screenshots are originally from... (Score:5, Informative)

      by linebackn ( 131821 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:34AM (#5563732)
      Yes, many these were taken from my site http://toastytech.com/guis/ [toastytech.com] Some of them look like they were taken from elsewhere. You can even see my name in the NT 3.51 user manager screen shot. I can't get to all of their site right now since it is mostly slashdotted. I normally don't mind if people use my images or graphics, but I generally ask that they provide reference or a link back to my site.

  • The lies prepetuated (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:45AM (#5563097) Homepage Journal
    From the site:
    It [Windows 95] is no longer a graphic user interface on MS-DOS, but a complete operating system. Although users can see a regular MS-DOS window in the boot process, the system takes over MS-DOS 7.0 after it's loaded completely.
    Nope, sorry. Windows 9x is still DOS with a quick switch over to the graphical shell.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:09AM (#5563197)
      Nope, sorry. Windows 9x is still DOS with a quick switch over to the graphical shell.

      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)

      by steveha ( 103154 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:22AM (#5563240) Homepage
      Windows 9x is still DOS with a quick switch over to the graphical shell.

      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)

        by g4dget ( 579145 )

        Windows 9x is still DOS with a quick switch over to the graphical shell.

        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

  • I feel old. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:47AM (#5563106) Homepage
    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.

  • Most popular app (Score:5, Funny)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:54AM (#5563130)
    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)

  • Official Microsoft Story (Score:5, Informative)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:58AM (#5563145) Homepage
    You can read the official M$ story of the windows history at microsoft.com [microsoft.com]
    including horrible coloured screenshots :)

    Rus
  • Oh wait, that *is* Windows 1.0.

    Ah, the days before bloat.

  • Used them? I have to program for some of them! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ojQj ( 657924 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:11AM (#5563203)
    > For those of you who have used all of them, I'm sorry.

    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)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:18AM (#5563231) Homepage Journal
    Here's a Windows Timeline [windowspro.net] list of each MS OS and its date. Also, includes the current future OS'.

  • So easy to bash the past... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:31AM (#5563263)
    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.

  • this is like one of those TV flashbacks (Score:5, Funny)

    by tankdilla ( 652987 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @04:41AM (#5563289) Homepage Journal
    Seeing the old Windows 3.10 startup screen brought me back to when I got my first computer, and the Windows 3.1 splash screen booted up. It was Christmas morning and I was a young lad. This was a really big thrill, being the first kid on the block with a computer. After the splash screen, there was some setup screen for some program that was preinstalled. After filling in the information, I clicked the Next button and waited for more magic to happen. I waited...and waited....and waited....then my father pushed ctrl+alt+del, and up pops my very first blue screen of death! It rudely told me it was busy and commenced to spit floppy disks out of the disk drive at me. I went to bed crying and terrified of the computer, and never touched another computer again after that.

    the end.

    just kidding, actually my father reinstalled the system, and eventually we got it working.

  • Jesus (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tedrlord ( 95173 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:06AM (#5563333)
    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.

  • Windows 95 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jsse ( 254124 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:06AM (#5563334) Homepage Journal
    The 32-bit operating system also offered enhanced multimedia capabilities, more powerful features for mobile computing, and integrated networking

    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)

      by spongman ( 182339 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:37AM (#5563418)
      yeah win95 did not have a multithreaded 'kernel', it's ring-0 code was not reentrant. but this does not mean that 32-bit applications and the set of win16 apps could not be preempted if they were in user code. it wasn't until the preempt kernel patch that linux operated in precisely that same manner - threads in the kernel would spin before continuing. when you run 16-bit apps win95 doesn't 'resort' to a less sophisticated form of multitasking the 32-bit apps, they're multitasked in exactly the same way they always are, it's just the 16-bit apps that are preempted as a single app. To do otherwise would be impossible: 16-bit apps expect to cooperatively multitask with each other; they share a single address space, message queue, global heap, the whole lot. If you wanted them to preempt each other you'd have to rewrite all the existing 16-bit apps. Not much of a compatibility feature.

      Your statements are not based on fact.

  • Choice... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bazmonkey ( 555276 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:14AM (#5563355)
    with over 90% of PC users choosing to adopt this software

    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)

    by G3ckoG33k ( 647276 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:15AM (#5563358)
    Jobugeek wrote: "For those of you who have used all of them, I'm sorry." Why? I have produced a lot of stuff using Windows? I don't think Windows is _that_ bad even if I mostly use Linux today.

    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)

    by FrostedWheat ( 172733 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @06:21AM (#5563562)
    Hiya!

    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)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:55AM (#5563784)
    "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!

  • Fun Game - aftermarket metaphores (Score:3, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @08:13AM (#5563837) Homepage
    Here's a fun game to play - think of all the aftermarket 'fixes' for Winblow$ and the marketing metaphore. For example:

    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)

    by DMDx86 ( 17373 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @08:58AM (#5564000) Journal
    http://toastytech.com/guis/win101disk.zip

    Runs nicely in VMWARE.

  • Remember this *IS* history folks... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by erinacht ( 592019 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @09:15AM (#5564073) Homepage
    It must not be taken out of context

    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!

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