Microsoft Computer
Group Leader: Delcris Manansala
Group Member: Raicen Trinidad
Kurt Ocampo
James Longhay
Bon Condrillon
Microsoft is the largest vendor of computer software in the world. It is also a
leading provider of cloud computing services, video games, computer and
gaming hardware, search and other online services. Microsoft's corporate
headquarters is located in Redmond, Wash., and it has offices in more than
60 countries.
Company origins
Harvard University classmates Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in 1975 to
develop a compiler for the Altair 8800, a very primitive early computer. Gates
contacted the manufacturer Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS)
and offered to write a program for the new computer. Gates and Allen created an
interpreter for BASIC -- which was then a mainframe programming language -- to use
with the Altair.
MITS hired Gates and Allen in 1975. But by 1976, they left to devote more time to
their own fledgling company, Microsoft, which they incorporated in 1981.
That year, the company was contracted by IBM to develop an operating system for
IBM's personal computer. Called PC-DOS by IBM, Microsoft also marketed its own
version, MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System). The early 1980s saw both
IBM's and Microsoft's fortunes soar.
Microsoft developed a graphical interface that ran on top of DOS called Interface
Manager, later renamed Windows on its release in 1985. This was inspired by the
same Xerox PARC research project that Apple used to move an arrow across a
graphical desktop.
Windows OS
Microsoft struggled with Windows for the first few years.
In 1983, Microsoft introduced its first Windows operating system, Windows 1.0,
which was not released until November 1985. Heavily influenced by Apple's existing
graphical user interface, Windows 1.0 was more user-friendly than the command-line
interface of DOS, with menus that the user could access with a keyboard or mouse.
But it wasn't until Windows 3.0 came out in 1990 that it began to command some
respect from the user base. The release of Windows 3.1 in 1992 finally received
widespread acceptance. And the release of Windows 95 in 1995 saw the beginning of
a shift from DOS-based applications to Windows-based applications.
But to run Windows, the PC first had to load DOS. DOS was a 16-bit operating
system, while Windows was a 32-bit operating system. The result was a crash-prone
Windows. In 1992, Microsoft hired veteran developer David Cutler from Digital
Equipment Corp. with the intention of building a new 32-bit operating system from
the ground up. It was called Windows NT -- the NT standing for "new technology."
However, the initial versions of NT had high system requirements and few PCs could
use it. So, Microsoft shifted Windows NT to be a server operating system. But as
hardware improved, more and more people began using Windows NT as a desktop
operating system.
So, in the late 1990s, Microsoft began the project of merging Windows 95 and
Windows NT into one operating system. The result was Windows 2000 -- released in
the year 2000 -- followed by Windows XP the following year for desktops and
Windows Server 2003 two years later.
