History
of Microsoft Windows Part III
Windows 3.0 to Windows
2000
Start Part One The
History of Microsoft Windows
Part Two Getting
the Bugs Out
On May 22, 1990, the critically accepted
Windows 3.0 was released. Windows 3.0 had an improved program manager and
icon system, a new file manager, support for sixteen colors, and improved
speed and reliability. Most important, Windows 3.0 gained widespread third-party
support. Programmers started writing Windows-compatible software, giving
end users a reason to buy Windows 3.0. Three million copies were sold the
first year, and Windows finally came of age.
On April 6, 1992, Windows 3.1 was
released. Three million copies were sold in the first two months. TrueType
scalable font support was added, along with multimedia capability, object
linking and embedding (OLE), application reboot capability, and more. Windows
3.x became the number one operating system installed in PCs until 1997,
when Windows 95 took over.
On August 24, 1995, Windows 95 was
released in a buying fever so great that even consumers without home computers
bought copies of the program. Code-named Chicago, Windows 95 was
considered very user-friendly. It included an integrated TCP/IP stack,
dial-up networking, and long filename support. It was also the first version
of Windows that did not require
MS-DOS
to be installed beforehand.
On June 25, 1998, Microsoft released
Windows 98. It was the last version of Windows based on the MS-DOS kernel.
Windows 98 has Microsoft's Internet browser "Internet Explorer 4" built
in and supports the new input devices like USB.
Windows 2000 was based on Microsoft's
NT technology, and Microsoft offered automatic software updates over the
Internet. We can expect to see a greater user of speech and facial recognition
in future versions of Windows. Computer users will soon control their computers
without even touching a keyboard or mouse.
Further
Reading
Articles on the history of Windows,
Microsoft and Bill Gates.
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