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 a
work 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 by
Windows 2.1 in May 1988, while Microsoft ended its support on December 31, 2001.
Release versions
The
operating environment came in two different variants with different names and
CPU support.[1][2] The basic edition supported the 8086 mode of the
80386 microprocessor.[3] Despite its configuration, the variant was fully operational on an
8088 or
8086 processor, although the
high memory area would not be available on an 8086-class processor;[4][5] however,
expanded memory could still be used.[6][7]IBM's
PS/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 to Windows/286 with the release of
Windows 2.1 in 1988.[4]
The other variant, named Windows/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 a
protected mode kernel, above which the
GUI and applications run as a
virtual 8086 mode task.[15][16]: p.2 The variant had fully
preemptive multitasking,[7][16]: p.2 and allowed several
MS-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 provided
EMS 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-based
virtual 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 has also introduced
desktop icons,
keyboard shortcuts, and the terminology "minimize" and "maximize", as opposed to "iconize" and "zoom" which was used in
Windows 1.0.[29] Support for 16-color
VGA 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 on
floppy 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.[36]: 507–508 The system files WINOLDAP.MOD and WINOLDAP.GRB are used to run MS-DOS programs.[36]: 509
IBM licensed Windows's
GUI for OS/2 as
Presentation Manager, and the two companies stated that it and Windows 2.0 would be almost identical.[37]
System requirements
The official system requirements for Windows 2.0 include the following.
Windows 2.0 is considered to be an incremental improvement of its predecessor, but still a
work in process.[27][40] Due to its improvements, Microsoft Windows gained more popularity after its release and its interface was considered to be easier to manage.[41]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.[37]CNET considered that Windows 2.0 "wasn't much better than Windows 1.0".[42]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".[43]
The operating environment cost $99.[44] 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.[45][46] It was succeeded by
Windows 2.1, which was released in the
United States and
Canada in May 1988.[47]
On March 17, 1988,
Apple Inc. filed a lawsuit against
Microsoft and
Hewlett-Packard, accusing them of violating copyrights Apple held on the Macintosh System Software.[48][49] Apple claimed the "
look and feel" of the
Macintosh operating system, taken as a whole, was protected by
copyright 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]
References
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^Miller, Michael (April 13, 1987).
"First Look". InfoWorld. Vol. 9. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 46.
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ab"Apple Takes on IBM". PC Magazine. Vol. 6, no. 20. Ziff Davis, Inc. November 24, 1987. p. 170.
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ab"High-Impact Graphics". PC Magazine. Vol. 7, no. 16. Ziff Davis, Inc. September 27, 1988. p. 38.
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^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.
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abRay Duncan (September 1987). "Character-Oriented Display Services Using OS/2's VIO Subsystem". Microsoft Systems Journal.
Microsoft. pp. 1–15.
^Hall, William (June 26, 1990).
"Windows". PC Magazine. Vol. 9. Ziff Davis, Inc. p. 427.
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^Emery Davis, Frederic (1993). The Windows 3.1 Bible. Pennsylvania: Peachpit Press. p. 644.
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^Miller, Michael (March 26, 1990).
"OS/2: The Right Stuff?". Info World. Vol. 12. InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. p. 54.
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abDuncan, Ray (1988). The MS-DOS Encyclopedia. Microsoft Press.
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abAlsop, Stewart II (January 18, 1988).
"Microsoft Windows: Eclectism in UI"(PDF). P.C. Letter. 4 (2): 6–7.
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^Keefe, Patricia (February 5, 1990).
"Precedents may aid Lotus case". Computerworld. Vol. 24. IDG Enterprise. p. 144.
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