Windows 1.0 Remembering it After 40 Years
November 20th commemorates the 40-year anniversary of the release of Windows 1.0. Originally an add-on to the MS-DOS command line that was purely graphical, it indeed established a separate way of trying to use computers, but it was severely condemned for being demanding and not performing well.
"Everybody Moves to Mouse and Windows"
The most revolutionary change Windows 1.0 brought was its graphical interface based on windows that imposed an alien interface to users in the shape of a mouse. For most defiant keyboard warriors who battled it out on MS-DOS, spending more money to buy a mouse was probably their foremost source of hostility.
Another Performance Hullabaloo
The graphical shell remained demanding for its time, eliciting dissatisfaction from users whose minimum system requirements were a considerable leap from a bare-bones MS-DOS setup:
- 8086 or 8088 processor
- Minimum 256 KB of RAM
- Two double-sided 5.25" floppy disk drives
- A graphics card
Even with this hardware, the OS suffered from slow performance and support of a very small number of programs.
Apps Forever and Dear
Windows 1.0 did give users some applications still known today, including Paint, Notepad, and Calculator. The price was an obstacle, though. Initial cost in the United States was $99 at the time of release in 1985, which translates into approximately $296 today.
Sales and Legacy
This being the very first Windows version, the company sold half-a-million copies before version 2.0 was released. Microsoft also provided an unusually long support term for the OS, updating it for 16 years from November 1985 through December 2001. True commercial acceptance, however, would be generated by the release in 1990 of Windows 3.0, which sold nearly 10 million units and assured the future of the platform.
