Happy 30th birthday, Windows!

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First of a two-part series, looking at the amazing innovations and triumphs over the years.A trip down 64K memory lane.InfoWorld
[See the full post at: Happy 30th birthday, Windows!]

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Happy 30th Birthday Windows!

One thing i don’t miss is Windows 98. That blue screen of death. LOL.

My favorited Windows i used with XP & Win 7.

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Whoa! I had no idea it had really been that long! I flew up to Chicago with a friend to a Compexpo. They had this new program called “Windows” It was version 1.01 and now you’re telling me that was 30 years ago! He signed up as a Beta Tester, but I was a confirmed DOS-head and stayed that way just out of stubborness. I remember v3.1 but that was because there was no longer any way for me to keep up with my friends. And here I am, waiting for you to tell me to go ahead and let Win 10 do the update thing for v1511. A wild ride, for sure.

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WFW 3.11 over DOS 6.22 – loved it. IMHO, the most stable Windows until Win2K Pro. Ah, the simpler times…

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And you could always drop back to the command prompt

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Windows for Workgroups 3.11 what a mouthful ;-)I was still using a Tandy 1000 and a C128.

I held off until Windows 95

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@Doc Yes, Windows 2K Pro the best Windows desktop ever. No bloat, just doing what was supposed to do. Likely not in majority with this point of view, but still…

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The slideshow went from Win-7 directly to Win-10 like Win-8 never even existed… I even clicked the “Prev” button thinking I’d skipped a page. That’s fine by me as I skipped jumping on the Win-8 bandwagon and haven’t ventured beyond 7 yet and in all likelihood never will!

I still think Win-8 is nothing more than an oversized smartphone, feel free to color me archaic.

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@Ed –

Yep. Wait for the (promised) second half of the story.

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Very interesting reading (while i should be working). Looking forward to the second part.

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It seems as though MS has been around forever. Thirty years seemed a mistake, but no, it has only been that long. IBM was founded in 1911 and they were on top for decades producing both hardware and software, then they changed their core business and moved into services. They are still one of the most valuable and respected brands out there, but changing over to services was not easy.

MS has been successful with Windows but have failed miserably in the past with hardware. Their acquisitions have not gone well either. Now they plan to venture into services for the first time. Let’s see if they have learned anything from their past failures.

Going forward, having a 90% monopoly with Windows helps, but respect has to be earned. Trust has to evident. Value has to demonstrated.

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The company’s current behavior disgraces 30 years of accomplishment.

Does that seem too radical? What is the alternative view? That the current practices of increasingly complex trickery and deception–a techie arms race against the customer–are just frat-boy misbehavior? Windows includes Windows Update, which transports malware to our computers and demonstrates the company’s intention to take control of them regardless of their owners’ wishes.

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First computer I owned had Win 3.1 & DOS 5.0. I bought it mainly to learn about computers. Next came Win 95 which I thought was a very big step in the right direction and then Win 98 SE. I got a lot more gripes and complaints from W98 than 95, but not many BSOD’s. It usually turned out to be bad programming on the games I was playing and not so much the OS. I still find that today. Yes I remember when computers were fun and a hobby for me.

Being 20 something in the 70's was far more fun than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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@wdburt1 and all. The behavior of forced change started with IE4 and has progressed since bit by bit (literally). I do not believe that MS is listening to their customer base and hasn’t been for a while. The behavior now is just so overt it has become distasteful. There was a time when I supported the MS platform, but they lost me at the Win8 push, Win10 just solidified it.
With the release of this new Win10 update it’s unfortunately played out the way I thought it would, which is a shame. MS will be in charge of your settings and will dictate how your OS will behave, it’s an intrusive unethical practice. It’s going to come down to control and unfortunately they’re going to have the bulk of that control via the update mechanism and the EULA.

As an admin of hundreds of systems and technology I usually ask myself “Is this is a practice I would follow?” If it is not then I typically do not promote it and certainly will not deploy it in my personal life. As an admin I was always taught that good work was never noticed, because we paid attention to the details and any successful implantation was done without the user base noticing anything had changed. That’s been my gauge of success since then, this latest roll out has been unsuccessful according that that guideline. When you can change over power during normal business operations without any impact that’s a good day. MS doesn’t care about consequences that’s pretty apparent.

The security perspective is tragic, if you implement all the cool technologies they are pushing it’s going to open up a lot of data. Hololens is a very cool technology, however also very frightening in the respect of being able to map the floor plan and objects in your house. That’s a tinfoil perspective, but the possibility is there. It seems the people making these decisions at MS are banking that you want the cool and are willing for forego any control you could have over it.

Kinda like the free upgrade, currently it’s not free you have to sink a lot of time into finding out what changed without your approval then set things back to how you had them. This costs you time and effort even if you script it. So in asking that question “Is this a practice I would follow?” that’s a big no.

I believe that these practices will lead to detrimental consequences for the organization as a whole, but people will have to be savvy to understand the consequences for the choice to use the MS platforms.

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@Howard
Many of your thoughts regarding MS practices strike me as being on point and appropriate. Rather than just flaming MS, you provide context and clearly point out the disturbing behavior emanating from Redmond these days. The behavior from MS that really disturbs me is the all too apparent embrace of obfuscation in their statements regarding topics of privacy issues and use of telemetry to monitor/control personal systems. I do not view Windows 10 as viable for any mission critical application where legal requirements regarding personal data and notification are imposed upon users. The children in charge at MS are providing an OS designed for children who play in a non-adult world. I use the word “children” to denote those who uncritically accept a computing framework dominated by “eye candy” to camouflage an erosion of user control and understanding of the behavior of their systems. It is too early to predict where and how this ends.

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@Frank
Thanks, How this ends is still in the future, however this appears to be the direction MS wants to take. The legal ramifications of this direction are dizzying at best and certainly pose all manner of security issues for those of us in that industry. I would be very curious to see what data leaves a Win10 machine and reaches the destinations we know about, however I think with the currect patch mechanism that makes it a full time job due to rolling changes. All I know is that this current direction doesn’t end well for anyone.

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