How Windows Looked

A retrospective look at Windows versions, with screenshots:

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-windows-used-to-look-like-2014-7#windows-10-1985-1

Windows 1.0 (1985) The company considered calling it Interface Manager
Windows 2.0 (1987-1990) Introduced desktop icons
Windows 3.0 (1990) sold 10 million copies in 2 weeks
Windows 95 (1995) sold 7 million copies in 5 weeks; start button debut
Windows 98 (1998) "the first real software release for consumers "
Windows ME (2000) PCWorld Worst Tech Products of All Time list
Windows XP (2001-2005) "sure, swift and satisfying" "emphasized security "
Windows Vista (2006-2008) "no compelling reason to upgrade "
Windows 7 (2009) "what Vista should have been "
Windows 8/8.1 (2012-present) "goal was to optimize the OS for tablets "

 

Very interesting antik. I joined at the W95 on the 1st comp I bought. Love those Gates glasses. Neil.

 

How long did you stay with W95? For you, which version came next?

 

W95 was on the comp which we purchased from my wife's workplace. They were renewing ALL their comps as the big companies do. I used it for about a week and played around with the comp upgrading the CPU/RAM/HDD and installed W98.
My son had a copy of W98SE which I then upgraded to and that stayed current for a couple years, then I built my 1st comp and installed XP.
I was given a Compaq Presario 1700 Laptop by a golfing mate who said it wouldn't work and he was wondering how to dispose with it. I recognized that the HDD (10GB) was faulty, so I purchased a 2nd hand 60GB HDD and installed that and set it up with the recovery discs running Windows ME.
I had quite a play with the Laptop purchasing bits and pieces (2nd hand keyboard as the original had been damaged) upgrade to max CPU and RAM and cooling fan and a new Battery. Then I installed XP on it and it performed quite well.
I've been learning all the time and have noticed quite a lot of change during this time. I try to keep up with the Technology as it comes out and as I can afford it and don't like the idea of being left behind.
I enjoy the latest OS W8.1 and keep alternating between my Drives with W7 Pro and Vista Bus. Neil.

 

I mostly remember the hardware. Like you, I've resurrected what others were willing to bury. There was a NEC PowerMate 386SX that ran Windows 3.0 which was acquired in a sidewalk sale for $45. I bought every accessory, including a piggyback processor to run 486 code. The
machines today are so good they don't need upgrading and tweaking, and that has taken some of the fun away.

 

Interesting story. I started using computer with IBM P/S1, 386 with Windows 3.1. I just did some homework and little bit gaming. After that I had a 486 with Windows 95, upgraded from 3.1. I used internet and e-mail first time in the late 90's with that computer. I remember how amazing it was to listen a short clip of music via internet.
After that I have as a hobby, resurrected several old pc's, like this 486 I'm using now. I don't have experience of Windows 1.x. Funny that MS considered naming it 'Interface Manager'. Not exactly a catchy name... I have used a Windows 2.11 /386 on a 386SX. It wasn't so impressive, looked like a Dosshell, but it could multitask. I later installed Windows 3.0 on that computer. Win 3.0 was the first really succesful version of Windows. When MS saw how well it was selling, they dumped their cooperation with IBM to develop OS/2. They realized they could do better with their own OS, clearly a good decision.

 

Hi ThomasJK, Looking at your System Details, I couldn't help but laugh at the RAM spec. The first comp I bought was running 8MB's RAM and I upgraded it to 2x256MB's.
Look at my System Details and see what my latest build has in RAM - 16GB's!!
My original comp had an Intel Pentium CPU (MHz) I think - my latest is a 6core AMD CPU!! Don't times change?
My motherboard has USB3.0 which is another mind blower compared to 25 years ago. Neil.

 

Hi Neil,

Yes, I have a whopping 8 MB's of RAM And even though I've configured one MB of that for a RAM disk, Windows 3.1 runs quite nicely with that. Although, I just had a strange occurrence. After about three and a half hour uptime, (browsing the web and reading newsgroups) my system resources had dropped to 9% ! Closing the browser only brought them back to 16%, I had to restart Windows.

That was quite an upgrade, you did back in the days to your 1st computer (from 8 to 256MB's).

Times really have changed, and the deveplopment has been notable. Amount of RAM on computers has multiplyed, well, so have also the memory requirements of software. And the harddrive sizes have changed similarly.

 

Talk of HDD sizes reminds me when the wife bought her HP Pavilion in 1998. It had the "new" Windows 98 OS and the pack had an HP Printer included (Ithink it was a 695 Model) but it had a "whopping" 5GB HDD!! I did the RAM upgrade myself going from 64MB to 512MB's (max)
I had the HD upgraded to 20GB's which cost $120.00 for a Techo to do (transfer her Data) plus the HDD cost $125.00 in those days.
I can buy a 500GB SATA drive for $50.00 today. Neil.