Microsoft Windows Turns 29: Happy Birthday to the World's Number 1 OS! [Love it or hate it]

Softpedia ^ | 11/21/2014

[John S Mosby]

Dr. Ed Roberts story and his company that hired Gates et al.
Really an amazing story of a very smart man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Roberts_%28computer_engineer%29

[keat]

Interesting, thanks. My first experience was installing a ripped-off copy of 3.1 from like 17 floppies.

[Red in Blue PA]

[W.]

I didn’t have a need for Lotus, but enjoy DOS gaming still. My plumber friend told me—’Gotta learn yer DOS!’ All the fun of config.sys and IRQ’s getting the sound card to jive. They say kids are so hot on computers, lessee one of them set up a dos game box... Sure, NOW there’s emulator programs! Where were they 20 yrs. ago? ;)

[Dr. Sivana]

Windows was, is, and will continue to be the world's number one operating system for the desktop for many years from now, as neither Mac OS X nor Linux have what they need to overtake Microsoft's key player in the PC war.

Windows DEFINITELY was not an "operating system" in its 1.0-2.x incarnations, and was still running on top of DOS with all of its memory handling limitations until at least Win 95 and truly became its own OS only with Windows NT.

[Riley]

Old IT guy here. Running Mint on a couple of boxes at home. Sorting a wi-fi issue, although I haven’t been able to give it my full attention yet. Very nice. I have a lappy that want to use for astronomy telescope control.

[Riley]

I have that same shirt. I don’t look nearly as good in it.

[EVO X]

Made a living supporting Macs and PC’s and got into Linux for a while before I retired. I have zero inclination to use linux as a desktop platform.
If I want to torture myself, I can fire up the unix console on my mac mini. I have windows 7 bootcamp installed, but the only time I run that is to do the monthly updates. The only reason I keep bootcamp is there is an outside chance a relative will have a windows question. Most have moved to tablets and smart phones..

[neocon1984]

Vista wasn’t all that bad, but I have switched to Macs anyway.

[neocon1984]

What happens if I press Control, Alt, Delete ... in a tender manner?

[bicyclerepair]

Hardly any torture involved in getting a Linux pc.
Linux likes NVidia best. So it helps to know a little first.

I’ll take Mint over ANY windoze, hands down. Everything works crisply on Mint, including Netflix. Sick of waiting for windoze. I want an OS that is quick!

[greeneyes]

We used Lotus at work, so I got one for home too. Don’t remember too much about it, since we went on to all the upgrades and stuff.

I am to the age now, that I hate upgrades. I just want to get on and do my thing and get off the computer. I can’t stand spending time figuring out the new stuff. Just got windows 8.1 and it’s driving me crazy.

[doorgunner69]

I just use the damn things as tools, nothing more or less. How well they do the job is all that matters.

This treating of electronics and software as objects of love and desire is so creepy.

[KarlInOhio]

Windows 1.0 requirements: 256 KB of storage space, two double-sided floppy disk drives, graphics adapter card, and up to 512 KB of space to run apps.

I remember Windows 1.0 was needed for (maybe even included in) Balance of Power. I blew up the world many, many times with it.

[sportutegrl]

What about Bob?

[lacrew]

Started with 2.0...

...something I tend to forget about it - it was on a disk (or a pile of disks), since my Zenith 286 did not have a hard drive.

Remember they days of pulling out a disk to run a program?

[W.]

I know what you’re saying, it took me some time to know W7 when I got this laptop, I’d not kept up since W95 except for a $5 secondhand iMac G3/9.2.2 OS. I hope to stay with this for a spell...

[Paleo Conservative]

I skipped Windows ME. Since I was using lots of technical applications, I got a high performance workstation with Windows 4 NT in 1997. By 2001 that computer had had memory, processor, and graphics upgrades, and NT had gotten unstable. I upgraded to Windows 2000 in 2001 and that same computer started performing flawlessly even though it was a mishmash of parts. Win 2K had lots of the Windows ME interface applied to it.

When my mom needed a new computer in late 2000, my brother and I noticed that the configurations we were looking at from Dell had enough power to run Win 2K, so my brother and I decided we should get Win 2K rather than Win ME. Mom used that computer for over 7 years till we got her a high powered HP laptop with Vista for Xmas 2007 so she could use Photoshop. She's still using that laptop in part due to its 17" monitor. I upgraded it to a Win 7 just 2 years after she got it due to how horrible Vista was. After having a second system crash that made the Windows 7 installation unbootable, I got her an SSD to replace the original physical system drive. In part I got the SSD, because I no longer have the patience to have to wait for the extra hours it takes to wait for hard drives to copy all the files during installation. Two years later, the computer works better than ever, and we'll probably keep it as long as Win 7 is supported by Microsoft.

[greeneyes]

My computer with windows xp crashed and died so I couldn’t even update it. I bought it just after vista(I think). Anyway whatever replaced had so many bugs, that I bought a Dell computer off the shelf that still had xp.

We got our grand daughter’s computer updated to windows 7, but since mine was done done done Hubby bought me a new one. I now have an HP all in one with windows 8.1.

It only had one sheet of quick start instructions and that really just was how to hook up the cords and stuff. No manual or anything. I have ordered a book - 8.1 for seniors and dummies.

Still trying to figure out the help button.

[W.]

Ouch. Well, millions have gone before you and the good thing of that is they’ve documented all the fun they had online. Run a search to help figure something out, it’s been an invaluable assist to me—I’ll still be learning W7 stuff when it goes obsolete...