Windows Celebrates 25 Years As A New Era Dawns

The first release was followed by Windows 2.0 and Windows 2.1 which moved the environment, which sat on top of DOS, into a multi-tasking environment, of sorts, with overlapping windows. It was not until the release of Windows 3.0 or, more accurately, Windows 3.11 that it started to gain traction in the market.

Parallel with this release, Microsoft had been working with IBM to develop a business version of Windows, OS/2, but a schism had formed and IBM brought out its own version while Microsoft released Windows NT (New Technology).

Though OS/2 advocates saw the IBM version as vastly superior to Microsoft, it was NT that was to change the world and establish the era of distributed computing.

On the desktop, Microsoft stopped the version numbering and, in 1995, launched Windows 95, the version of Windows that really caught the public’s attention. Win 95, as it was popularly called, actually overshadowed the next two releases, Windows 98 and Windows ME,  in the way that ME’s successor Windows XP has overshadowed Vista and Windows 7.

In October 2010, 90 percent of the world’s personal computers ran Windows and XP was still on 59 percent of them, more than Windows 7 and Vista combined. But XP is coming to the end of its supported life and Windows 7 is starting to catch up.

The Future Is A Clouded Vision

What the next release, “Windows 8”,  will be is a matter for speculation. Work is in progress behind tightly closed doors but the computing world has changed and personal operating systems are becoming an anachronism in the cloud-oriented world of virtualised systems.

There is a strong rumour that Windows 8 will feature a virtualised operating system. Applications and data will be centrally managed and delivered to the computer rather than being installed on it. The concept of desktop-as-a-service is one of the strongest rumours emanating from the Redmond Campus.

Windows 8 could also mark the end of the road for Windows as cloud services delivered through browsers take over on a multitude of end-point devices ranging from desktops through tablets and down to smartphones.

So it may be Happy Birthday to Windows rather than Many Happy Returns.