Noted as an improvement of its predecessor, Microsoft Windows gained more sales and popularity after the release of the operating environment, although it is also considered to be the incarnation that remained awork in progress. Due to the introduction of overlapping windows,Apple Inc. had filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in March 1988 after accusing them of violating copyrights Apple held; in the end, however, the judge ruled in favor of Microsoft. The operating environment was succeeded byWindows 2.1 in May 1988, while Microsoft ended its support on December 31, 2001.
Theoperating environment came in two different variants with different names andCPU support.[1][2] The basic edition supported thevirtual 8086 mode of the80386 microprocessor.[3] Despite its configuration, the variant was fully operational on an8088 or8086 processor, although thehigh memory area would not be available on an 8086-class processor;[4][5] however,expanded memory could still be used.[6][7]IBM'sPS/2 Model 25, which had an option to ship with a "DOS 4.00 and Windows kit" for educational markets, shipped Windows with 8086 hardware.[8][9] The basic edition would be later renamed toWindows/286 with the release ofWindows 2.1 in 1988.[4]
The other variant, namedWindows/386, was available as early as September 1987,[10] pre-dating the release of Windows 2.0 in December 1987.[11][12] It was much more advanced than its other sibling.[13][14] It introduced aprotected mode kernel, above which theGUI and applications run as a virtual 8086 mode task.[15][16]: p.2 The variant had fullypreemptive multitasking,[7][16]: p.2 and allowed severalMS-DOS programs to run in parallel in "virtual 8086" CPU mode, rather than always suspending background applications.[17] With the exception of a few kilobytes of overhead, each DOS application could use any available low memory before Windows was started.[18] Windows/386 also providedEMS emulation,[19] using the memory management features of the i386 to make RAM beyond 640k behave like the banked memory previously only supplied by add-in cards and used by popular DOS applications.[19] There was no support for disk-basedvirtual memory, so multiple DOS programs had to fit inside the available physical memory.[20] Users could run more applications on the 386 version.[21]
Unlike its predecessor, Windows 2.0 allows the user to overlap and resize application windows.[27][28] It includeddesktop icons,keyboard shortcuts, and the terminology "minimize" and "maximize", as opposed to "iconize" and "zoom" which was used inWindows 1.0.[29] Support for 16-colorVGA graphics, EMS memory, and new capabilities of the i386 CPU in some versions were also added.[30] Windows 2.0 is the last version of Windows that ran solely onfloppy disks.[31]
The Windows API functions are largely handled by KERNEL.EXE, USER.EXE, and GDI.EXE. These files along with device drivers, printer drivers being the exception, are combined by the Windows setup program into WIN200.BIN and WIN200.OVL.[34]: 507–508 The system files WINOLDAP.MOD and WINOLDAP.GRB are used to run MS-DOS programs.[34]: 509
IBM licensed Windows'sGUI for OS/2 asPresentation Manager, and the two companies stated that it and Windows 2.0 would be almost identical.[35]
Windows 2.0 is considered to be an incremental improvement of its predecessor, but still awork in process.[27][39] Due to its improvements, Microsoft Windows gained more popularity after its release and its interface was considered to be easier to manage.[40] Stewart Alsop II predicted in January 1988 that "Any transition to a graphical environment on IBM-style machines is bound to be maddeningly slow and driven strictly by market forces", because the GUI had "serious deficiencies" and users had to switch to DOS for many tasks.[35]CNET considered that Windows 2.0 "wasn't much better than Windows 1.0".[41]BYTE magazine listed the variant as among the "distinction" winner of the BYTE Awards in 1989, describing it as a "serious competition for OS/2" as it "taps into the power of the 80386".[42]
The operating environment cost $99.[43] Sales of Microsoft Windows reached one million in 1988, and by January 1990, it had reached less than two million, although Windows 2.0 was not widely used.[44][45] It was succeeded byWindows 2.1, which was released in theUnited States andCanada in May 1988.[46]
Chris Pratley of Microsoft wrote in 2004 that although "much better" than the "sort of a demo" version 1.0, 2.0 was too slow to use and limited in memory.[47]
On March 17, 1988,Apple Inc. filed a lawsuit againstMicrosoft andHewlett-Packard, accusing them of violating copyrights Apple held on the Macintosh System Software.[48][49] Apple claimed the "look and feel" of theMacintosh operating system, taken as a whole, was protected bycopyright and that Windows 2.0 violated this copyright by having the same icons.[50][51][52] The judge ruled in favor of Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft on all but 10 of the 189 graphical user interface elements on which Apple sued, and the court found the remaining 10 GUI elements could not be copyrighted.[53]
^Byte. Vol. 15. McGraw-Hill. 1990. p. 131.Archived from the original on September 8, 2021. RetrievedJuly 2, 2022.
^Miller, Michael (April 13, 1987)."First Look".InfoWorld. Vol. 9. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 46.ISSN0199-6649.Archived from the original on September 22, 2022. RetrievedSeptember 16, 2022.
^ab"Apple Takes on IBM".PC Magazine. Vol. 6, no. 20. Ziff Davis, Inc. November 24, 1987. p. 170.ISSN0888-8507.Archived from the original on April 7, 2022. RetrievedApril 18, 2022.
^ab"High-Impact Graphics".PC Magazine. Vol. 7, no. 16. Ziff Davis, Inc. September 27, 1988. p. 38.ISSN0888-8507.Archived from the original on July 2, 2022. RetrievedApril 18, 2022.
^IBM Personal System 2 and IBM Personal Computer Product Reference. 4. New York: IBM. 1988. p. 78.
^Miller, Michael (August 17, 1987)."First Look".Info World. Vol. 9. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 44.ISSN0199-6649.Archived from the original on April 8, 2022. RetrievedJuly 9, 2022.
^Hall, William (June 26, 1990)."Windows".PC Magazine. Vol. 9. Ziff Davis, Inc. p. 427.ISSN0888-8507.Archived from the original on September 22, 2022. RetrievedJuly 9, 2022.
^Emery Davis, Frederic (1993).The Windows 3.1 Bible. Pennsylvania: Peachpit Press. p. 644.ISBN978-1-56609-015-5.
^Miller, Michael (March 26, 1990)."OS/2: The Right Stuff?".Info World. Vol. 12. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 54.ISSN0199-6649.Archived from the original on September 22, 2022. RetrievedJuly 9, 2022.
^Cowart, Robert (2005).Special edition using Microsoft Windows XP home. Brian Knittel (3 ed.). Indianapolis, Ind.: Que. p. 92.ISBN978-0-7897-3279-8.OCLC56647752.
^"Windows 2.03". Toasty Tech.Archived from the original on February 7, 2013. RetrievedAugust 7, 2013.
^Shinder, Thomas W. (2003).MCSA/MCSE managing and maintaining a Windows server 2003 environment: exam 70-290 study guide and DVD training. Debra Shinder Littlejohn, Jeffrey A. Martin. [Rockland, Mass.]: Syngress. p. 5.ISBN978-0-08-047925-5.OCLC55664320.
^abDuncan, Ray (1988).The MS-DOS Encyclopedia. Microsoft Press.
^O'Regan, Gerard (2016).Introduction to the history of computing: a computing history primer. Switzerland. p. 220.ISBN978-3-319-33138-6.OCLC953036113.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^The Facts on File dictionary of computer science. John Daintith, Edmund Wright, Inc Facts on File. New York: Facts On File. 2006. p. 240.ISBN978-1-4381-0939-8.OCLC234235258.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^Birkinbine, Benjamin J. (2020).Incorporating the digital commons: corporate involvement in free and open source software. London: University of Westminster Press. p. 56.ISBN978-1-912656-43-1.OCLC1155440332.
.svg){kind=logo}
