Windows (operating system)
Microsoft Windows is an operating system produced and maintained by Microsoft Corporation. It is estimated that as of December 2007 [1] the Microsoft Windows family accounted for roughly 88% of operating system usage, with 73.4% belonging to the Windows XP family. Windows is used both as a desktop operating system and a server[2] operating system, and is intended for use with the Intel x86 family of processors.
Windows is notoriously unreliable, despite (or maybe because of?) Microsoft's near-monopoly share of the operating system market. It crashes so often that the term "blue screen of death" has entered the vocabulary. See also this satire: Matrix Runs on Windows XP
Versions
The following are a list of releases of Microsoft Windows. While initially Windows was merely a graphical user interface extension to MS-DOS shell[3], it became a full operating system beginning with the release of Windows NT.
- Windows 1.0, 2.x, and 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 3.11FWG
- Windows NT
- Windows 95
- Windows 98 and 98SE
- Windows ME
- Windows 2000
- Windows Neptune (unreleased)
- Windows XP Professional, Home, and Media Center editions
- Windows Vista
- Windows Seven
References
- â OS Statistics. Refsnes Data. Retrieved 29 January, 2008.
- â Windows Server 2003 R2 Home. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 29 January, 2008.
- â Windows History: Windows Desktop Timeline. Microsoft Corporation. Retrieved 29 January, 2008.