Personal computers windows history

Windows Vista offered an advancement in reliability, security, ease of deployment, performance and manageability over Windows XP.

New in this version were capabilities to detect hardware problems before they occurred, security features to protect against the latest generation of threats, a faster start-up time, and low power consumption when placed in the new sleep state. Windows Vista simplified and centralized desktop configuration management, which reduced the cost of keeping systems updated. Windows 7 was released by Microsoft on October 22, as the latest in the year-old line of Windows operating systems and as the successor to Windows Vista.

Enhancements and new features in Windows 7 included multi-touch support, Internet Explorer 8, improved performance, faster start-up time, Aero Snap, Aero Shake, support for virtual hard disks, a new and improved Windows Media Center, and improved security. Windows 8 was released on August 1, Windows 10 was the successor to Windows 8. Windows 10 featured fast start-up and resume, built-in security, and the return of the Start Menu in an expanded form.

Any qualified device such as tablets, PCs, smartphones and Xbox consoles was able to upgrade to Windows 10, including those with pirated copies of Windows. As of Sept. Aside from operating systems designed for use on personal computers PCs and laptops, Microsoft has also developed operating systems for servers, handheld devices, and mobile phones.

Windows Server is a series of Microsoft server operating systems. The Windows Server name made its debut with the release of Windows Server and continues with the current release, Windows Server Home Server allowed users to share files such as digital photos and media files, and also automatically backed up home networked computers. A version of the Windows operating system was designed for small devices such as personal digital assistants PDAs or Handheld PCs in the Microsoft vernacular.

The mobile operating system for smartphones and mobile devices from Microsoft was based on the Windows CE kernel and designed to look and operate similar to desktop versions of Microsoft Windows. Unlike Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7 was targeted more to the consumer market than the enterprise market. Its successors included Windows Phone 8 and Windows 10 Mobile.

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Hardware Number of top supercomputers worldwide , by country. Hardware Quarterly server market revenue share worldwide , by vendor. Hardware Lenovo's revenue Thomas Alsop. Research expert covering the global hardware industry. Profit from additional features with an Employee Account. Please create an employee account to be able to mark statistics as favorites. Then you can access your favorite statistics via the star in the header. Profit from additional features by authenticating your Admin account.

Then you will be able to mark statistics as favourites and use personal statistics alerts. Save statistic in. XLS format. The A also marked HP's first use of integrated circuits in a commercial product.

A year later, it steered Apollo 11 to the lunar surface. Astronauts communicated with the computer by punching two-digit codes into the display and keyboard unit DSKY. The AGC was one of the earliest uses of integrated circuits, and used core memory, as well as read-only magnetic rope memory. The astronauts were responsible for entering more than 10, commands into the AGC for each trip between Earth and the Moon.

The Nova line of computers continued through the s, and influenced later systems like the Xerox Alto and Apple 1. Designed by John V. Blankenbaker using standard medium-- and small-scale integrated circuits, the Kenbak-1 relied on switches for input and lights for output from its byte memory.

In , after selling only 40 machines, Kenbak Corporation closed its doors. Initially designed for internal use by HP employees, co-founder Bill Hewlett issues a challenge to his engineers in fit all of the features of their desktop scientific calculator into a package small enough for his shirt pocket.

They did. The HP helped HP become one of the most dominant companies in the handheld calculator market for more than two decades. The first advertisement for a microprocessor, the Intel , appears in Electronic News. Developed for Busicom, a Japanese calculator maker, the had transistors and could perform up to 90, operations per second in four-bit chunks.

Federico Faggin led the design and Ted Hoff led the architecture. Under the direction of engineer Dr. Based on the Intel microprocessor, the Micral is one of the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computers. Designer Thi Truong developed the computer while Philippe Kahn wrote the software. Truong, founder and president of the French company R2E, created the Micral as a replacement for minicomputers in situations that did not require high performance, such as process control and highway toll collection.

In , Truong sold R2E to Bull. Designed by Don Lancaster, the TV Typewriter is an easy-to-build kit that can display alphanumeric information on an ordinary television set. The original design included two memory boards and could generate and store characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A cassette tape interface provided supplementary storage for text.

The TV Typewriter was used by many small television stations well in the s. Wang was a successful calculator manufacturer, then a successful word processor company. The Wang makes it a successful computer company, too. Wang sold the primarily through Value Added Resellers, who added special software to solve specific customer problems. The first commercially advertised US computer based on a microprocessor the Intel , the Scelbi has 4 KB of internal memory and a cassette tape interface, as well as Teletype and oscilloscope interfaces.

Scelbi aimed the 8H, available both in kit form and fully assembled, at scientific, electronic, and biological applications. In , Scelbi introduced the 8B version with 16 KB of memory for the business market. The Alto is a groundbreaking computer with wide influence on the computer industry. It was based on a graphical user interface using windows, icons, and a mouse, and worked together with other Altos over a local area network.

It could also share files and print out documents on an advanced Xerox laser printer. For its January issue, hobbyist magazine Popular Electronics runs a cover story of a new computer kit — the Altair Within weeks of its appearance, customers inundated its maker, MITS, with orders.

Chuck Peddle leads a small team of former Motorola employees to build a low-cost microprocessor. The and its progeny are still used today, usually in embedded applications.

Southwest Technical Products is founded by Daniel Meyer as DEMCO in the s to provide a source for kit versions of projects published in electronics hobbyist magazines. Of the dozens of different SWTP kits available, the proved the most popular. Tailored for online transaction processing, the Tandem is one of the first commercial fault-tolerant computers.

The banking industry rushed to adopt the machine, built to run during repair or expansion. The Video Display Module VDM marks the first implementation of a memory-mapped alphanumeric video display for personal computers.

Introduced at the Altair Convention in Albuquerque in March , the visual display module enabled the use of personal computers for interactive games. The fastest machine of its day, The Cray-1's speed comes partly from its shape, a "C," which reduces the length of wires and thus the time signals need to travel across them. High packaging density of integrated circuits and a novel Freon cooling system also contributed to its speed.

Typical applications included US national defense work, including the design and simulation of nuclear weapons, and weather forecasting. Intel and Zilog introduced new microprocessors. Five times faster than its predecessor, the , the Intel could address four times as many bytes for a total of 64 kilobytes. The Zilog Z could run any program written for the and included twice as many built-in machine instructions. Designed by Sunnyvale, California native Steve Wozniak, and marketed by his friend Steve Jobs, the Apple-1 is a single-board computer for hobbyists.

With an order for 50 assembled systems from Mountain View, California computer store The Byte Shop in hand, the pair started a new company, naming it Apple Computer, Inc. In all, about of the boards were sold before Apple announced the follow-on Apple II a year later as a ready-to-use computer for consumers, a model which sold in the millions for nearly two decades. When connected to a color television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics for the time.

Millions of Apple IIs were sold between and , making it one of the longest-lived lines of personal computers. Apple gave away thousands of Apple IIs to school, giving a new generation their first access to personal computers. The TRS proved popular with schools, as well as for home use.

The TRS line of computers later included color, portable, and handheld versions before being discontinued in the early s. The first of several personal computers released in , the PET comes fully assembled with either 4 or 8 KB of memory, a built-in cassette tape drive, and a membrane keyboard.

The PET was popular with schools and for use as a home computer. After the success of the PET, Commodore remained a major player in the personal computer market into the s. The success of the VAX family of computers transformed DEC into the second-largest computer company in the world, as VAX systems became the de facto standard computing system for industry, the sciences, engineering, and research. Shortly after delivery of the Atari VCS game console, Atari designs two microcomputers with game capabilities: the Model and Model The served primarily as a game console, while the was more of a home computer.

Atari's 8-bit computers were influential in the arts, especially in the emerging DemoScene culture of the s and '90s. The Motorola microprocessor exhibited a processing speed far greater than its contemporaries. This high performance processor found its place in powerful work stations intended for graphics-intensive programs common in engineering.

Intended to be a less expensive alternative to the PET, the VIC was highly successful, becoming the first computer to sell more than a million units. Commodore even used Star Trek television star William Shatner in advertisements. About 50, were sold in Britain, primarily to hobbyists, and initially there was a long waiting list for the system.

The machine was expandable, with ports for cassette storage, serial interface and rudimentary networking.

The DN is based on the Motorola microprocessor, high-resolution display and built-in networking - the three basic features of all workstations. Apollo and its main competitor, Sun Microsystems, optimized their machines to run the computer-intensive graphics programs common in engineering and scientific applications. Apollo was a leading innovator in the workstation field for more than a decade, and was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in IBM's brand recognition, along with a massive marketing campaign, ignites the fast growth of the personal computer market with the announcement of its own personal computer PC.

It featured a 5-inch display, 64 KB of memory, a modem, and two 5. Thousands of software titles were released over the lifespan of the C64 and by the time it was discontinued in , it had sold more than 22 million units. It is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest selling single computer of all time. Franklin was able to undercut Apple's pricing even while offering some features not available on the original.

Sun Microsystems grows out of this prototype. Sun helped cement the model of a workstation having an Ethernet interface as well as high-resolution graphics and the UNIX operating system. The invention of the microprocessor helped in creating a more powerful central processing unit than the ones used in computers at the time and shrunk it so computers could be smaller.

The microprocessor was the major invention that gave birth to the microcomputer, or the personal computer as it is known today.

Development of the single-chip microprocessor was the gateway to the popularization of cheap, easy to use, and truly personal computers. The first personal computers were microcomputers. The Altair was introduced in a Popular Electronics magazine article in the January issue. In keeping with MITS's earlier projects, the Altair was sold in kit form, although a relatively complex one consisting of four circuit boards and many parts.

Since the computer's main language was binary code and only had an output of flashing lights, the computer was unusable by the common person. The Commodore PET , another early home computer, was released in late In , Sony introduced the 3.

In July , Sega announced the world's first home computer equipped with AI artificial intelligence , intended for household and consumer markets. In , Panafacom a conglomerate of Fujitsu , Fuji Electric and Matsushita released the Lkit, the first bit microcomputer.