November 19th, 2006
Windows … Just Plain Windows … 21 Years Old on Monday
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
Windows XP reached its fifth birthday not that long ago. How about the original, Windows 1.0? That horribly slow software, which ran on top of DOS and provided an incredibly unsatisfying experience (yes, I ran it as I was a developer) is 21 years old on Monday.
Windows 1.0 was released on 20th Nov 1985 and the hardware requirements were 256KB of RAM, DOS 2.0 and two floppy drives, two years late. The retail price was $100, which is worth about $177 in today’s money - the same as Windows XP Home. Source: Connected Internet
We Say: I saw the number 256 and immediately thought MB, not KB. How spoiled we’ve become. And yes, even with the speed of today’s CPUs and video cards, it’s still never fast enough for my techie friends and myself. There are some interesting tidbits at the article, including the fact that Windows crashes an estimated 25m times a day. ‘Course, I’m sure that includes 95, 98 and Me.
allen says:
If you’re counting Me then the others are rock solid stable. Me crashes when you turn it on, open a file or just look at it.
November 19th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Bill R. says:
And I still say GeoWorks Ensemble was a better suite. It ran beautifully on my Tandy 1000, when Windows 3 would barely load in real mode.
Bill R.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:53 am
profit.puremoney.info » Blog Archive » Latest news says:
[…] To run, Windows 1.0 required a machine with 256KB of RAM, DOS 2.0 and two floppy drives. (”I saw the number 256 and immediately thought MB, not KB,” writes Michael Santo of RealTechNews. “How spoiled we’ve become.”) […]
November 20th, 2006 at 7:05 pm