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 ...
Bill Gates is such a dreamboat in this picture.
Why do I picture Clippy jumping up and down yelling “Don’t forget about me, don’t forget about me!”
I remember having fun editing my autoexec.bat
Did they roll in PARC and Apple?
I came on the computing scene around windows 9 - it was kind of a nightmare- what with drivers being a pain to install, to peripherals not working- and using dialup at i think it was 28K (Does that sound right?) to try to diagnose computer problems-
My neighbour was way before windows 9 but not sure what version- i remembered him saying how much ‘better 9 was’ lol- He died a few years ago- before windows 10 got established- -
There never was a “Windows 9”. You have Windows 7, 8, Vista, 10.
You may be remember either Windows 95 or Windows 98/98se if you are talking about dialup modems.
remember when you got to choose if and when to update your windows version?
I remember when I went full-in with Linux about 5 years ago.
autoexec.bat and config.sys
That’s where the magic happened.
Yes dang it- 95- memory not what it used to be- then 98 came along with soem pretty good improvments but still kinda tricky-
Hell yeah — you had to work at it to get it upgraded.
A whole separate history article could be written about Clippy.
What was the one before 95 if you remember? My friend had a set of floppy drives with the operating system on them-
OTOH, Steve Ballmer was his over-the-top self from the very beginning, as that famous sales clip demonstrates.
Before Win95 was Win3.11 (Windows for Workgroups), the first with an attempt at networking.
Oh that brings back memories . I had a 286 with MS DOS . It was given to me cause the company that bought it couldn’t figure how to use it . It was a nice upgrade to my Tandy lol My sister was in college at the time and when the 386 came out she bought one and could not figure out how to use and she gave it to me . I put Windows 3 on it and it could barely run it . When the 486 came out I bought one right away 3.1 on it and it was awesome at the time . It’s come so far .
The picture of Windows 1.0 from 1985
it says Disk Free Space 30024K
What? They had 30 megabyte hard drives back then?
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