Posted on 11/20/2020 8:31:22 PM PST by dayglored
The PC revolution started off life 35 years ago this week. Microsoft launched its first version of Windows on November 20th, 1985, to succeed MS-DOS. It was a huge milestone that paved the way for the modern versions of Windows we use today. While Windows 10 doesn’t look anything like Windows 1.0, it still has many of its original fundamentals like scroll bars, drop-down menus, icons, dialog boxes, and apps like Notepad and MS paint.
Windows 1.0 also set the stage for the mouse. If you used MS-DOS then you could only type in commands, but with Windows 1.0 you picked up a mouse and moved windows around by pointing and clicking. Alongside the original Macintosh, the mouse completely changed the way consumers interacted with computers. At the time, many complained that Windows 1.0 focused far too much on mouse interaction instead of keyboard commands. Microsoft’s first version of Windows might not have been well received, but it kick-started a battle between Apple, IBM, and Microsoft to provide computing to the masses.
[LOTS of pics and text and whatnot at the link...]
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
Whatever happened to Netscape and Java? As I recall, it was all black and white. My son was among the first pioneers to add color.
I am SO not a techie, but always had the latest of whatever it was. Control, alt, delete....LOL, those were the days.
And the wonderful Hamster Dance...some young woman created it, I believe the first moving cartoon that started in black and white and then someone added color. I still watch it once in a great while.
And who could forget “Bob”.
Well, just about everybody.
Yeah, 30MB was considered large but not unheard of. You really paid through the nose for it, too.
Wife and I bought our first PC in 1997 when our town first became connected to the internet. Had Windows 95 and Netscape browser. I was 47 at the time and after years of using a typewriter, I had to switch over to using a keyboard and mouse. It was tricky trying to control the mouse. Remember getting up and making a cup of coffee while a photo slowly downloaded over the dialup modem. Most of the photos where huge, people hadn’t learned to resize yet.
3.11
was that what they called NT? I don’t really recall now- but my neighbour was really into computing then and tried to get me into computing, but it looked too involved for me at that time- (I was too busy ‘makin money’ at dead end restaurant jobs to take time to learn the computer lol)
Anyway- he had the os on floppys if i recall correctly-
LOL- I remember my neighbour telling me when we finally got looking at computers “Oh you’ll never need more than so and so megabytes”
Today, games take up gigabytes- and terabyte drives actually fill up fast if you have video or photo work-
Either Windows 3.1 or possible Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Thanks-
Yeah, Seagate had (I believe) the Seagate 238. That might have used Rll compression to get 30 mb out of a 20mb Seagate 225. There was also the Seagate 251 for 40 Mb. Those were half-height drives. If you went full height, companies like Micropolis, Priam and Core would sell you drives with much greater capacity.
I began my computer life with the Commodore 64. Then a DOS box. Windows NT thereafter.
Thanks- I’ll bet those didn’t take up much space at all lol-
There are ‘tiny linux oses’ now, but not sure if they are even as small as windows was back in the day?
I think i still have a box somewhere with a bunch of floppy disks on them with various programs and backups we used to do- Our newest computers don’t even have the drives anymore-
Windows NT was much more robust, and had greater system requirements. It also had compatibility issues with games and DOS mode stuff, especially if you used NTFS. With Windows 2000, true preemptive resource segregation would (mostly) be part of Windows entire lineup.
Windows keeps changing, the BSOD stays the same...
Novell had much to do with MS networking. Also a leader with its NDS directory services.
Windows XP was the best
Never had a problem.
Even the in the early days, Windows would take a couple of 1.2 MB floppies. I beloeve 1.0 fit on 1 360kb diskette, in part because lots of people still didn’t have hard drives.
No one will need more than 680K of memory.
I bought a 32 MB disk on a card in the late 1980s, probably 1987, for about $500. Now for that you can probably get either 500 GB or 1 TB - along with the computer attached to it.
I was happy when home computers started becoming available, and when it became possible to put together your own PC clone from parts purchased through mail order I jumped into that. I still have a large collection of vintage home computers from the 70s and 80s along with computers that I put together from parts starting with XT clones.
I have to admit that I really did not get that excited about graphic based interfaces in the beginning. I didn't sense the advantages compared to just setting up a menu system. But as more and more Windows software became available it became obvious that this is where the future was taking us.
A turning point for me was when Adobe Photoshop became available for Windows and I purchased it and a scanner for a desktop computer that I had put together. Until Photoshop I hadn't cared that much about having more and more computing power and storage. But after you have had to repeatedly wait 20 minutes for a filter to alter a large photo, faster processors, more memory, and more hard drive space takes on new meaning.
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