Today Microsoft launched its latest version of its iconic Operating System: Windows 8. There have been many version of Windows over the years, and one can’t help but wonder what justifies this version number. Microsoft and other technology companies have over-written and re-named their product history before, so we take a good hard look at all the previous operating systems to see if the numbers add up.
Microsoft Windows started as version 1.0 as an add-on to the DOS operating system. The product was a simple GUI program that was little more than a visual file manager. Windows 2.0 was released to take advantage of the features offered by Intel’s 286 processor. Windows 3 is the version that really started Microsoft on its current path of success.
All of these versions numbers are very logical and can be easily counted. Where things start to get a little ambiguous is when Windows NT is thrown into the mix.
On the next page we start at the simple and humble beginning…
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