Microsoft Windows History of 20 Years

Written by jeremy on September 30, 2005

Yes I can hear you saying now “But isn’t Jeremy a Linux guy?!?” Well yes I am and my XP partition on my computer hasn’t seen the light for over 12 months, but Microsoft has done some nice things for the industry and has set the bar (not necessarily high in all respects). Plus Windows turns 20 this year so even the most zealous Linux users have to pay some respect. Here is the breakdown as taken out of Maximum PC mag I read (assume Windows is in front of each item):

  • 1.x (1985)
  • 2.x (aka windows/286 and windows/386) (1987)
  • 3.0
  • 3.1 (1992)
  • NT 3.1 (1993)
  • MS-DOS 6.22 (Last stand alone version of DOS 1994)
  • For Workgroups 3.11
  • NT 3.51 (1995)
  • 95 (1995 obviously)
  • NT 4.0 (1996)
  • 95 OSR2 (1996)
  • 98 (1998)
  • 98SE (1999)
  • 2000 (2000 duh!)
  • ME (2000)
  • XP (2001)
  • XP Media Center Edition (2002)
  • XP Tablet Edition (2002)
  • XP SP2 (2004)
  • XP 64-bit (2005)
  • Vista (????)

Go get the latest (November 2005) edition of Maximum PC to see all the details for each version.

There you have it folks. 20 years of Windows pain glory.