Microsoft Windows celebrates 30th anniversary

Elsewhere, Microsoft has started an Office Insider test programme based on the one it runs for Windows releases, while Windows Mobile sales continue to slump ahead of the release of the mobile version of Windows 10.

A computing revolution was born 30 years today as Microsoft launched the first version of its seminal Windows operating system, Digital Spy reports.

Windows 1.0 had a colour 16-bit interface and was less than 1MB in size.

Microsoft has officially made available via download early this month its first major update for the Windows 10 operating system, a little over three months since the OS was released in late July. XP proved so popular that it’s still running on millions of PCs around the world today, much to Microsoft’s irritation.

In day-to-day use, assuming you were willing to put up with it, Windows 1.0 centered around MS-DOS Executive, within which you ran a bunch of utilities created to make your life easier, including a basic paint program and word processor (Write), a notepad, a calculator, a card file, and a calendar. It also came with Reversi; Solitaire didn’t show up until Windows 3.0.

Anyway, Windows 1.0 was not successful, so Microsoft was hard at work on a new version that it released in December 1987 called Windows 2.0 (above).

There is a catch however, this feature is only being rolled out to certain versions of Windows 10: namely, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Enterprise, and Windows 10 Education. What’s your favorite Windows memory?

Basically, while Windows 10 adoption skyrocketed at first, it slowed down soon after that, but it eventually went up at a faster pace a few days later. This version was actually semi-usable, although many people still opted for DESQview or a Macintosh if they needed a graphical interface.

Windows 10 usage has spiked within the last week – part of an ongoing increase since the start of the month.

Microsoft meanwhile had promised in November 1983 to ship Windows by April 1984, but now denied that it had announced a release date, and predicted that Windows would ship by June 1985. Between that and the upcoming MS-DOS 5.0, I was hooked on PCs. The company has a goal of bringing Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by 2017, so it’s pretty clear that it must do a lot more than that to accomplish this mission.