25+Years+of+Microsoft+Windows


 * 25 Years of Microsoft Windows **

In November of 1985 Microsoft released for sale Windows version 1.0 which ran on top of DOS 3.0. Windows will reach its 25th anniversary on November 20th of 2010 and Windows 7 will reach its 1st anniversary on October 22nd 2010.

It is interesting to note that the two least successful versions of Windows did not have numbers associated with them. Both Windows ME and Windows Vista never achieved the level of adoption of previous versions like Windows 3.1, 3.11, Windows 95 and Windows 98 and 98SE and the still widely used Windows XP. Yes I know XP is not a numbered version but after ME an **X**tra **P**ush is just what Windows needed and still holds about a 60% market share.

The next version will be named: - Windows 8 But whatever the successor to Windows 7 is named and how innovative it might be, the ultimate fate is in the hands of marketing, cost to upgrade and ease of migrating from earlier versions, and Microsoft please do not make a big mistake and leaving Windows XP out of the upgrade path.


 * What would you like to see in the way of improvements?**

Elimination of OEM versions. All manufactures must install the same retail version a consumer can by at the shop. Now if you ever buy a computer and later the motherboard fails after the manufacture’s warrantee has expires, you are not stuck with a useless series of numbers and letters called an OEM product key.

Who then handles the support, add a 5 character prefix that identifies the source such as a computer manufacture, store bought product, MSDN, TechNet, MSDAA, Volume license and so on.

A means for users to assign CPU cores to specific task categories. By the time the next version of Windows arrives we could well see processors with 12 or more cores.

There are 45 Control panel “Items” when ‘View by’ is set to:- Large or Small Icons. The category view however only provides 8 categories and 17 subcategories. Would be nice if all the items where included in the list by category view.

Give the manufactures of hardware an incentive to write device drivers and any necessary software for their older but widely used products. Printers and scanners would be a good place to start.


 * The cost of purchasing a computer:**

As a side note 1985 was also the year that Gateway computers was founded, then known as Gateway 2000.
 * I**t would be interesting to list the cost and performance of a PC at that time and every five years thereafter to the present day.

Note that Gateway stated “Completely IBM Hardware and Software Compatible” as not all PC clones were 100% compatible back then. Also by 1988 the Intel 386 processor was king of the hill and a 16MHz 386 PC cost about £2,250.00.

Note: The cost of the year 1985 was derived from various articles on the web. Pricing for all other systems (except 1988 as stated above) are based on actual advertisement from that time period, mostly in August of each year.


 * 1985 IBM PC AT – Approx. £3750.00**

8Mhz Intel 286 processor

512KB RAM

1.2MB 5.25 inch floppy disk

20MB Hard Drive

14” EGA Color Monitor – 640x350 resolution (64 colors) - £500.00

MS DOS 3.0 and Windows 1.0

Serial & Centronics Printer ports

IBM Dot Matrix Printer – £370.00


 * 1988 Gateway 2000 Model A12 - £1250.00**

12 MHz 80286 Processor (Switchable to 6)

1 Meg 0 Wait State RAM (100 NS)

1 – 360K Floppy Drive and 1 – 3.5” Diskette Drive (Made by Teac)

40 MB Seagate ST251 Hard Drive

1-Parallel and 2-Serial Ports

101 Key Enhanced Keyboard (Keytronic)

14” Samsung EGA Monitor (640 x 350) with Sigma Designs Autoswitch EGA Card

200 Watt Power Supply and Battery Backed-Up Clock Calendar

8 Expansion Slots (6-16 Bit, 2-8 Bit) and Space for 5 ½ ht. Storage Devices

Completely IBM Hardware and Software Compatible, 1 Year Warranty

Not included in the above package was Windows 2.0 – Price £65.00


 * 1990 Gateway 2000 - £3400.00**

25MHz 486

4.0MB RAM

1.44MB 3.5 inch and 1.2MB 51/4 inch Floppy Drives

150MB Hard Disk

16 Bit VGA card with 512K RAM

14” Monitor

DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0

CD-ROM Purchased from Tiger Direct - £500.00

HP DeskJet 500 – List Price £460.00


 * 1995 Gateway 2000 P5-133 - £2900.00**

133MHz Pentium processor

256K Cache

16MB EDO RAM

1.6GB 9ms DMA Mode 2 EIDE Hard Drive, 1.44 Floppy

17” CRT Monitor + 64 Bit Matrox Millennium with 2MB WRAM

6X EIDE CD-ROM, 16 Bit sound card and Speakers with subwoofer

28.8 Fax/Modem

Windows 95, MS Office95


 * 2000 – Dell 8100 Series - £2050.00**

1.5GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor

128MB Rambus 400 MHz RDRAM Memory

80GB Ultra ATA-100 (5200 RPM) Hard Drive

19” CRT Monitor, 64MB AGP-4X NVIDIA GeForce2 Graphics

12X DVD ROM and 12X CD-RW Drive

Digital Sound Card, Surround sound speakers with Subwoofer, 56K V90 WinModem

Windows ME

Printer, HP DeskJet 990Cse (2400 x 1200 dpi on photo paper, 17 pages per minute) £250.00


 * 2005 - Gateway FX-400XL £2,000.00**

3.0GHz Intel Pentium D (Dual Core) Processor

2.0GB (2048MB) DDR2 SDRAM Dual Channel Memory

500GB (Two 250GB Serial ATA II drives, 7200 RPM) and 1.44 Floppy drive

21” Widescreen High-Definition LCD Flat Panel display

16x Double Layer DVD+/- Read/Read/Write and second DVD-ROM drive

256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 7800 Graphics with DVI and TV Out

Integrated Intel 7.1 Sound with Logitec Z-2300 THX Speakers, 56K data/fax modem

Integrated Broadband Ethernet (10/100/1000 Gigabit) Network interface.

Windows XP SP2 with Backup CD, Price includes 3 years part/labor/tech support plan

Printer, HP Photosmart 8250 (4800 x 1200 dpi, 31 pages per minute) - £125.00

3.06GHz Intel Core™ i7-880 (Quad Core + HT) processor (3.06GHz)
 * 2010 - Dell Studio XPS 8100 - £2,000.00**

16GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz

1.5TB, 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache

24.0" Dell ST2410 Full HD Monitor with VGA cable

ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB GDDR5

Dual Optical Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Burner (Writes to DVD/CD/BD) and DVD+/-RW

Bose Companion 3 Series II Multimedia Speaker System

Keyboard Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution

Mouse Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX

Windows 7 Professional, 64bit, English

Printer, Dell V715w Wireless All-In-One Printer (33 ppm in black and 30 ppm in color) £100.00

All prices are estimates ( Not accurate sums )

Today’s entry level Desktop PCs can cost as little as £300.00 and can go easily over £5,000.00 if you want all the bells and whistles that gamers need.

Laptops which once were the expensive and exclusive domain of a few lucky business types are now hold the lions share of all computer sales.


 * Inflation factor**

£6,000.00 in 1985 is the equivalent of about £11000.00 today!

£3,999.00 in 1995 is the equivalent of about£6000.00 today.

£3,179.96 in 2005 is the equivalent of about £5000.00 today