:: wikimiki.org ::

Microsoft Disk Operating System

Microsoft Disk Operating System

MS-DOS is a disk operating system made by Microsoft. It was the dominant operating system for the PC compatible platform during the 1980s. It has gradually been replaced on consumer desktop computers with various generations of the Windows operating system. MS-DOS was originally released in 1981 and had eight major versions released before Microsoft stopped development in 2000. It was the key product in Microsoft's growth from a programming languages company to a diverse software development firm, providing the company with essential revenue and marketing resources.

History

MS-DOS was created by computer manufacturer Seattle Computer Products (SCP) in 1980 as QDOS (for Quick and Dirty Operating System), but was renamed 86-DOS because it was designed to run on the Intel 8086 processor. In a sequence of events that would later inspire much folklore, Microsoft licensed QDOS to IBM on behalf of SCP. Microsoft acquired the system for only $50,000 from SCP shortly before the PC's release.

Development

Intel 8086 IBM and Microsoft both released versions of DOS; the IBM version was supplied with the IBM PC and known as PC-DOS. Originally, IBM only validated and packaged Microsoft developments, and thus IBM's versions tended to be released shortly after Microsoft's. However, MS-DOS 4.0 was actually based on IBM PC-DOS 4.0, as Microsoft was by then concentrating on OS/2 development. Microsoft released its versions under the name "MS-DOS", while IBM released its versions under the name "PC-DOS". Initially, when Microsoft would license their OEM version of MS-DOS, the computer manufacturer would customize its name (i.e. TandyDOS, Compaq DOS, etc). Most of these versions were identical to the official MS-DOS; however, Microsoft began to insist that OEMs start calling the product MS-DOS. Eventually, only IBM resisted this move. Computer advertisements of this period often claimed that computers were "IBM-Compatible" or very rarely "MS-DOS compatible". The two terms were not synonyms. There were computers which used MS-DOS which could not run all the software that an IBM-Compatible machine could. An example is the Pivot, which used MS-DOS but was not IBM-Compatible. Programs written specifically for IBM compatibles could run faster by bypassing slow MS-DOS functions, e.g. by writing video information directly to the area of memory assigned to it.
- PC DOS 1.0 - August 1981 - Initial release with the first IBM-PC
- PC DOS 1.1 - May 1982
- MS-DOS 1.25 - May 1982 - First release for non-IBM hardware
- MS-DOS 2.0 - March 1983 - Introduced features from Unix such as subdirectories, handle-based file operations, command input/output redirection, and pipes. Microsoft decided to use backslashes as pathname separators rather than slashes as on Unix apparently due to the latter character being used as the switch character in most DOS and CP/M programs. Adds support for hard drives and 360KB floppy disks
- PC DOS 2.1 - October 1983
- MS-DOS 2.11 - March 1984
- MS-DOS 3.0 - August 1984 - Adds support for 1.2MB floppy disks and larger hard disks
- MS-DOS 3.1 - November 1984
- MS-DOS 3.2 - January 1986 - Supported 2 hard disk partitions of up to 32MB, one primary and one "logical drive" in an "extended partition"
- PC DOS 3.3 - April 1987
- MS-DOS 3.3 - August 1987 - Supported multiple logical drives
- MS-DOS 4.0 - June 1988 - actually derived from IBM's codebase rather than the reverse
- PC DOS 4.0 - July 1988 - added the DOS Shell, a graphical menu selector, & support for hard disks of >32MB using the format from Compaq DOS 3.31. Also added many bugs and offered less free conventional memory than before. Generally regarded as an unsuccessful release and to be avoided
- MS-DOS 4.01 - November 1988 - bug-fix release
- MS-DOS 5.0 - June 1991 - In response to DR-DOS 5.0, adds comparable features to that product: memory management, full-screen editor, QBasic programming language, online help, and DOS Shell gains task switcher. See DR-DOS article for more information DR-DOS
- MS-DOS 6.0 - March 1993 - Response to DR-DOS 6.0. Added DoubleSpace disk compression (copied from Stacker) and other features
- MS-DOS 6.2 - November 1993 - Bug fix release
- MS-DOS 6.21 - February, 1994 - Following Stac lawsuit, removed DoubleSpace disk compression
- PC DOS 6.3 - April 1994
- MS-DOS 6.22 - June 1994 - Last official stand-alone version. DoubleSpace replaced with non-infringing but compatible DriveSpace tool
- PC DOS 7.0 - April,1995 - Bundles Stacker in place of DriveSpace
- MS-DOS 7.0 - August 1995 - Shipped embedded in Windows 95. Included large disk (LBA) and Long File Name (LFN) support
- MS-DOS 7.1 - August 1996 - Shipped embedded in Windows 95B (OSR2) (and Windows 98 in June 1998). Added support for FAT32 file system
- MS-DOS 8.0 - September 2000 - Shipped embedded in Windows ME. Last version of MS-DOS. Removes SYS command, ability to boot to command line and other features
- PC DOS 2000 - Year 2000-compliant version with minor additional features. Final member of the MS-DOS family Source: [http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/dos.htm PC Museum] MS-DOS grew in spurts, with many significant features being taken from other products and operating systems, such as Microsoft's own Xenix - a variant on Unix - and Digital Research's DR-DOS, as well as tools and utilities including Norton Utilities, PC Tools (Microsoft Anti-Virus), QEMM expanded memory manager, Stacker disk compression, and so on. With Intel's introduction of the 80286 microprocessor, IBM and Microsoft began work on a joint project called OS/2, originally a protected-mode version of MS-DOS. Later, Microsoft abandoned the project to devote full resources to Windows and Windows NT. Digital Research created the GEM graphical user interface (GUI), which had little popularity on PC compatibles. It was very successful on the Atari ST machines, but was ultimately eclipsed by Microsoft's Windows 3.0 release. Although its role as a desktop computer operating system has greatly diminished, today it is still used in various embedded x86 systems due to its simplistic architecture, minimal memory requirements, and minimal processor speed requirements.

Legal issues

As a response to Digital Research's DR-DOS 6.0, which bundled SuperStor disk compression, Microsoft opened negotiations with Stac Electronics, vendor of the most popular DOS disk compression tool, Stacker. Stac was unwilling to meet Microsoft's terms for licensing Stacker and withdrew from the negotiations. In the due diligence process, Stac engineers had shown Microsoft some Stacker source code. Soon, MS-DOS 6.0 was released, including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk-compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, rewritten to avoid the infringing code. These tactics were common for Microsoft; the company lost another lawsuit resulting from code in Windows 3.1 which caused spurious errors when Windows was launched on DR-DOS. See the DR-DOS article for more on this and Embrace, extend and extinguish for more on Microsoft's perceived anti-competitive maneuvers. Prior to 1995, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to computer manufacturers under three types of agreement: per-processor (a fee for each system the company sold), per-system (a fee for each system of a particular model), or per-copy (a fee for each copy of MS-DOS installed). The largest manufacturers used the per-processor arrangement, which had the lowest fee. This arrangement made it expensive for the large manufacturers to migrate to any other operating system, such as DR-DOS. In 1994 the US government charged Microsoft with violations of antitrust law, and a settlement agreement limited Microsoft to per-system licensing. Digital Research did not gain by this settlement, and years later its successor in interest Caldera sued Microsoft for damages. This lawsuit was settled with a monetary payment of 150 million dollars.

Multitasking

MS-DOS was not designed to be a multi-user or multitasking operating system, but many attempts were made to retrofit these capabilities. The Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) system call (originally targeted at loadable device drivers) and other mostly-undocumented functions were used to create pop-up applications. Although it used them itself, Microsoft discouraged use and sometimes denied the existence of these undocumented functions, but as many classes of co-resident software required these features developers were forced to disassemble MS-DOS to create their products. Borland's SideKick personal productivity product was a notable specimen. Add-on environments like TopView and especially DESQview attempted to provide multitasking, and achieved some success when later combined with the virtual 8086 mode and virtual memory features of the Intel 80386 and later processors. Windows/386 2.1 and subsequent versions provided similar albeit poorer features when running in "386 enhanced" mode, but Microsoft never specifically marketed this possibility and was mostly interested in converting customers to using GUI-mode Windows applications.

User interface

MS-DOS employs a command line interface and a batch scripting facility via its command interpreter, command.com. MS-DOS was designed so users could easily substitute a different command line interpreter, for example 4DOS. Beginning with version 4.0, MSDOS included a file manager program with a quasi-graphical user interface (the DOS Shell) that featured menus, split windows, and program shortcuts using character mode graphics that were a primitive imitation of the Mac OS and Windows.

MS-DOS compatibility with other Microsoft operating systems

After the release of the Apple Macintosh in 1984, IBM personal computer users also desired a graphical user interface. Many programs running under MS-DOS tried to fill the void by creating their own graphical interface, such as Microsoft Word for DOS, XTree, and the Norton Shell. However, this required duplication of effort and did not provide much consistency in interface design (even between product lines). Non-Microsoft efforts to provide a consistent interface, for example Digital Research’s GEM, also failed. Early versions of Microsoft Windows were ordinary programs that ran on top of MS-DOS and its clones. Later versions were launched from DOS but "extended" it by going into protected mode. Still later versions of MS Windows ran independently of DOS but included much of the old code such that DOS could run in virtual machines under the new OS. In new computers, MS-DOS cannot run directly if the hard drive uses the NTFS file system, which is the recommended file system in Windows XP. Users who wish to access their NTFS-formatted hard drive must use a NTFS compatible version of DOS.

Related systems

Several similar products were produced by other companies. In the case of PC-DOS and DR-DOS, it is common but incorrect to call these "clones". Given that Microsoft manufactured PC-DOS for IBM, PC-DOS and MS-DOS were (to continue the genetic analogy) "identical twins" that diverged only in adulthood and eventually became quite different products; DR-DOS was a clone of itself once removed.
- PC-DOS
- DR-DOS, Novell DOS, and OpenDOS
- FreeDOS, FreeDOS 32, and GNU/DOS
- PTS-DOS Under Linux it is possible to run copies of DOS and many of its clones under dosemu, a Linux-native virtual machine for running real mode programs. There are a number of other emulators for running DOS under various versions of UNIX, even on non-x86 platforms.

External links

- [http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Articles.aspx Tim Patterson on DOS] - Patterson wrote the QDOS OS
- [http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ak621/DOS/DOS-Head.html Richard Bonner's DOS website]
- [http://purl.oclc.org/net/Batfiles/ Batfiles] - the DOS batch file programming handbook and tutorial
- [http://www.nukesoft.co.uk/msdos/ MS-DOS Reference]
- [http://www.acad.humberc.on.ca/~frig8279/osessay/dos/history A Brief Timeline of DOS]
- [http://www.dosemu.org/ Linux/dosemu]
- [http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/ralf/pub/WWW/files.html Ralf Brown's Interrupt List]
- [http://www.datapol.de/dpe/freeware/ NTFS4DOS] - NTFS compatible DOS
- [http://www.oldos.org/ Old Os] Information and downloads for MS-DOS users
- [http://www.computerhope.com/history/dos.htm] History of DOS Category:Discontinued Microsoft software Category:DOS on IBM PC compatibles Category:DOS Category:Operating systems Category:Microsoft operating systems ko:MS-DOS ja:MS-DOS

Disk operating system

disk operating system (specifically) and disk operating system (generically), most often abbreviated as DOS, refer to operating system software used in most computers for the management of storage devices and the information on them (e.g., file systems for organizing files of all sorts). Such software is referred to as a disk operating system when the storage devices it manages are made of rotating platters.

History

In the early days of computers, there were no disk drives; delay lines, punched cards, paper tape, magnetic tape, magnetic drums, were used instead. And in the early days of microcomputers, paper tape or audio cassette tape (see Kansas City standard) or nothing were used instead . In the latter case, program and data entry was done at front panel switches directly into memory or through a computer terminal / keyboard, sometimes controlled by a ROM BASIC interpreter; when power was turned off after running the program, the information so entered vanished. Both hard disks and floppy disk drives require software to manage rapid access to block storage of sequential and other data. When microcomputers rarely had expensive disk drives of any kind, the necessity to have software to manage such devices (ie, the 'disk's) carried much status. To have one or the other was a mark of distinction and prestige, and so was having the Disk sort of an Operating System. As prices for both disk hardware and operating system software decreased, there were many such microcomputer systems. Mature versions of the Commodore, SWTPC, Atari and Apple home computer systems all featured a disk operating system (actually called 'DOS' in the case of the Commodore 64 (CBM DOS), Atari 800 (Atari DOS), and Apple II machines (Apple DOS)), as did (at the other end of the hardware spectrum, and much earlier) IBM's System/360, 370 and (later) 390 series of mainframes (e.g., DOS/VSE: Disk Operating System / Virtual Storage Extended). Most home computer DOS'es were stored on a floppy disk always to be booted at start-up, with the notable exception of Commodore, whose DOS resided on ROM chips in the disk drives themselves, available at power-on. In large machines there were other disk operating systems, such as IBM's VM, DEC's RSTS / RT-11 / VMS / TOPS-10 / TWENEX, MIT's ITS / CTSS, Control Data's assorted NOS variants, Harris's Vulcan, Bell Labs' Unix, and so on. In microcomputers, SWTPC's 6800 and 6809 machines used TSC's FLEX disk operating system, Radio Shack's TRS-80 machines used TRS-DOS, their Color Computer used OS-9, and most of the Intel 8080 based machines from IMSAI, MITS (makers of the legendary Altair 8800), Cromemco, North Star, etc used the CP/M-80 disk operating system. See list of operating systems.

PC-DOS/MS-DOS (and CP/M)

The best known family of operating systems named "DOS" is that running on IBM PCs type hardware using the Intel CPUs or their compatible cousins from other makers. Any DOS in this family is usually just referred to as DOS. The original was licensed to IBM by Microsoft, and marketed by them as "PC-DOS". It was first developed at Seattle Computer Products by Tim Patterson as a variant of CP/M-80 from Digital Research, but intended as an internal product for testing SCP's new 8086 CPU card for the S-100 bus. It did not run on the 8080 (or compatible) CPU needed for CP/M-80. It was called QDOS, among several other names. Microsoft licensed it from SCP, made changes and licensed the result to IBM (sold as PC-DOS) for its new 'PC' using the 8088 CPU (internally the same as the 8086), and to many other hardware manufacturers. In the later case it was sold as MS-DOS. Digital Research produced a compatible variant known as "DR-DOS", which was eventually taken over (after a buyout of Digital Research) by Novell. This became "OpenDOS" for a while after the relevant division of Novell was sold to Caldera International, now called SCO. There is also a free version named "FreeDOS". See also: List of DOS commands

External links

- [http://www.freedos.org FreeDOS (can be downloaded)]
- [http://www.drdos.net DR-DOS]
- [http://www.ibm.com/software/os/dos/ PC-DOS]
- [http://extdos.siteburg.com ExtDOS]
- [http://www.oldos.org Old Os (freeware DOS utilities)]
- Disk Category:Operating systems ja:DOS ko:도스

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation (, ) is the world's largest software company, with 2005 global annual sales of 40 billion US dollars and more than 55,000 employees in 85 countries and regions. The company's headquarters are in Redmond, Washington, USA. Microsoft develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Its most popular products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software, each of which has achieved near ubiquity in the desktop computer market. Microsoft has footholds in other markets, with assets such as the MSNBC cable television network, the MSN Internet portal, and the Microsoft Encarta computer encyclopedia. The company also markets home entertainment products, such as the Xbox and WebTV. "Micro-Soft" (short for microcomputer software) was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. After the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones in the mid-1980s, Microsoft used its new position, which it gained in part due to a contract from IBM, to dominate the home computer operating system market with its MS-DOS operating system. The company later released an initial public offering (IPO) in the stock market, which netted several of its employees millions of dollars due to the ensuing rise of the stock price. The price of the stock continued its rise steadily into the early 2000s. In Microsoft Windows, the company was selling what would become the most widely used operating system in the world, which was originally an add-on for their DOS operating system; Microsoft continued to push into multiple markets, such as computer hardware and television. In addition, Microsoft has historically given customer support over Usenet newsgroups and the World Wide Web, and awards Microsoft MVP status to volunteers who are deemed helpful in assisting the company's customers. With what is generally described as a developer-centric business culture, Microsoft has become widely known for some of its internal codes of conduct for its employees. One example is the "eat your own dogfood" mantra, which describes the practice of using pre-release products inside the company to test them in an environment geared towards the real world. Microsoft has also become notorious for its business practices—the U.S. Justice Department, among others, has sued Microsoft for antitrust violations and software bundling. In addition, Microsoft has been criticized for the security of its software. Despite this, Microsoft has won several awards, such as the "1993 Most Innovative Company Operating in the U.S." by Fortune Magazine. The company is on the Fortune 500 list of companies as of 2005. Microsoft opened its first research center outside the US at the Cambridge Science Park, UK. It currently has research centers around the world.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Microsoft&action=edit§ion=header edit this section]

History

:See also: History of Microsoft Windows. First conceived in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft has evolved through several stages throughout its history. By 1985, the company was selling the Microsoft Windows operating system and MS-DOS, and had collaborated with IBM to produce OS/2 Warp. By 1992, Microsoft had released an IPO in the stock market and discontinued OS/2 development to focus directly on Windows. By 1995, Windows was the most widely used graphical operating system in the world, and with the introduction of Windows 95, the company became a more consumer-driven company. Microsoft would proceed to enter other business markets, such as publishing and video games, would be sued more than once by the U.S. Justice Department and other governments and companies, and would continue to dominate the operating system market.

1975–84: the founding of Micro-soft

video game.
Top row: Steve Wood (left), Bob Wallace, Jim Lane. Middle row: Bob O'Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin. Bottom row: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen.]] Days after reading the January 1 1975, issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), to inform them that he and others had developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the platform. Allen flew to MITS to unveil the new BASIC system. Allen had never handled an Altair, since Gates had carried out all of the product development; however, the demonstration was successful and resulted in a deal with MITS to buy the rights to Allen's and Gates' BASIC for the Altair platform. Having identified a valuable opportunity, Gates left Harvard University to pursue the market and eventually founded "Micro-soft" in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The name Microsoft, without the hyphen, was first used in a letter from Gates to Allen on November 29, 1975, and in November 26, 1976 the name became a registered trademark. The company's first international office was founded on November 1, 1978, in Japan, entitled "ASCII Microsoft". On January 1, 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington. Steve Ballmer joined the company on June 11, 1980, and would later succeed Bill Gates as CEO. The company restructured on June 25 1981, to become an incorporated business in its home state of Washington (with a further change of its name to "Microsoft, Inc."). As part of the restructuring, Bill Gates became president of the company and Chairman of the Board, and Paul Allen became Executive Vice President. Microsoft's first operating system was Xenix, released in 1980 and later sold to Santa Cruz Operation. However, the source of the real success for the company was the DOS operating system. On August 12, 1981, after negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (PC). However, Microsoft did not have an operating system at the time, so it purchased a CP/M clone called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products for $50,000, which Microsoft renamed to PC-DOS. Due to potential copyright infringement problems with CP/M, IBM marketed both CP/M and PC-DOS for $250 and $40, respectively, with PC-DOS eventually becoming the standard because of its lower price. Around 1983, in collaboration with numerous companies, Microsoft created a home computer system, MSX, which contained its own version of the DOS operating system, entitled MSX-DOS; this became relatively popular in Japan and Europe. Later, after Compaq successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones. Microsoft was quick to use its position to dominate the home computer operating system market. Microsoft began licensing its operating system for use on non-IBM PC clones, and called this version of the operating system MS-DOS (short for Microsoft Disk Operating System). By marketing MS-DOS aggressively to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft rose from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry. Starting on May 2, 1983, with the "Microsoft Mouse", Microsoft entered markets such as computer hardware. This expansion included Microsoft Press, a book publishing division, on November 10 the same year, which debuted with two titles: "Exploring the IBM PC Home Computer" by Peter Norton, and "The Apple Macintosh Book" by Cary Lu.

1985–91: the rise and fall of OS/2

Cary Lu The Republic of Ireland became home to Microsoft's first international production facility in 1985, and on November 20 Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows, originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system. In August, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called OS/2. OS/2 was marketed in connection with a new hardware design proprietary to IBM, the PS/2. Shortly afterwards on February 16, 1986, Microsoft relocated to Redmond, Washington. Around one month later, on March 13, the company went public with an IPO, raising $61 million at $21.00 per share. By the end of the trading day, the price had risen to $28.00. In 1987, Microsoft eventually released their first version of OS/2 to OEMs. Continuing its trend of rebranding products from other companies, Microsoft announced SQL Server on January 13, 1988, a relational database management system for companies that was based on technology licensed from Sybase. In 1989, Microsoft announced at Comdex that the 1991 release of Windows 3.0 would be the last version of Windows. Over the next few years, Microsoft continued to issue statements indicating that OS/2 was the future of computing. On May 16, 1991, Bill Gates announced to Microsoft employees that the OS/2 partnership was over, and that Microsoft would henceforth focus its platform efforts on Windows and the Windows NT kernel. Some people, especially developers who had ignored Windows and committed most of their resources to OS/2, were taken by surprise, and accused Microsoft of deception. The Windows changeover was frequently referred to in the industry as "the head-fake". In the ensuing years, the popularity of OS/2 declined, and Windows quickly became the favored PC platform. 1991 also marked the founding of Microsoft Research, an organization in Microsoft for researching computer science subjects, and Microsoft Visual Basic, a popular development product for companies and individuals.

1992–95: domination of the corporate market

Microsoft Visual Basic During the transition from MS-DOS to Windows, the success of Microsoft's product Microsoft Office allowed the company to gain ground on application-software competitors, such as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Some allege that Microsoft used its inside knowledge of the DOS and Windows kernels and of undocumented Application Programming Interface features to make Office perform better than its competitors, but internal sources at Microsoft later revealed that the Office team did not have access to the Windows source code at the time, and relied on reverse engineering. Eventually, Microsoft Office became the dominant business suite, with a market share far exceeding that of its competitors. In March 1992, Microsoft released Windows 3.1 along with its first promotional campaign on TV; the software sold over three million copies in its first two months on the market. In October, Windows for Workgroups 3.1 was released with integrated networking capabilities such as peer-to-peer file and printing sharing. In November, Microsoft released the first version of their popular database software Microsoft Access. By 1993, Windows had become the most widely used GUI operating system in the world. Fortune Magazine named Microsoft as the "1993 Most Innovative Company Operating in the U.S.". The year also marked the end of a five-year legal case brought by Apple, dubbed Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., in which the ruling was in Microsoft's favor. That same year, Microsoft released Windows for Workgroups 3.11, a new version of the consumer line of Windows, and Windows NT 3.1, a server-based operating system with a similar user interface to consumer versions of the operating system, but with an entirely different kernel. As part of its strategy to broaden its business, Microsoft released Microsoft Encarta in 1994, the first encyclopedia designed to run on a computer. Microsoft also created the Microsoft Plus product support program for its customers, a service that offered cost savings on Microsoft products. The name of that program was later used for several expansion packs for Windows. The company changed its slogan to "Where do you want to go today?" in that year, as part of an attempt to appeal to nontechnical audiences in a US$ 100 million advertising campaign, which some critics regarded as uninspired. Dreamworks SKG and Microsoft formed a new company, Dreamworks Interactive, to produce interactive and multimedia entertainment properties in 1995. In March, Microsoft released Microsoft Bob, a Windows 3.1 program manager replacement, which is widely considered Microsoft's most unsuccessful product; its unpopularity became the source of many jokes. Up until 1995, Microsoft was a business-oriented company. However, in August 1995, it released a new version of its flagship software, Microsoft Windows 95, with a completely new user interface, including a novel start button; more than a million copies of Microsoft Windows 95 were sold in the first four days after its release. The new version of Windows was the start of a major transition towards a consumer-oriented company. In September, the Chinese government chose Windows to be the operating system of choice in that country, and entered into an agreement with the Company to standardize a Chinese version of the operating system. Microsoft also released the Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro joystick in an attempt to further expand its profile in the computer hardware market.

1995–99: foray into the Internet and other venues

computer hardware In the mid-90s, Microsoft began to expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. On August 24, 1995, it launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to AOL. MSN became an umbrella service for Microsoft's online services, using Microsoft Passport as a universal login system for all of its websites. The company continued to branch out into new markets in 1996, starting with a joint venture with NBC to create a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC. The station was launched on July 16 to compete with similar news outlets—in particular, CNN; in the same year, Microsoft launched Slate, an online magazine edited by Michael Kinsley, which offered political and social commentary along with the cartoon Doonesbury. In an attempt to extend its reach in the consumer market, the Company acquired WebTV, which enabled consumers to access the Internet from their televisions. Microsoft entered the palm computing market in November with Windows CE 1.0, a new built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system, specifically designed to run on low-memory, low-performance machines, such as handhelds and other palm-sized computers. 1996 saw the release of Windows NT 4.0, which brought the Windows 95 GUI and Windows NT kernel together. While Microsoft largely failed to participate in the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, some of the key technologies in which the company had invested to enter the Internet market started to pay off by the mid-90s. One of the most prominent of these was ActiveX, an application programming interface built on the Microsoft Component Object Model (COM); this enabled Microsoft and others to embed controls in many programming languages, including the company's own scripting languages, such as JScript and VBScript. ActiveX included frameworks for documents and server solutions. The company also released the Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, which had built-in support for internet applications. Later in 1997, Microsoft Office 97 as well as Internet Explorer 4.0 were released, marking the beginning of the takeover of the browser market from rival Netscape, and by agreement with Apple, Internet Explorer was bundled with the Apple Macintosh operating system as well as Windows. Windows CE 2.0, the handheld version of Windows, was released this year, which included a host of bug fixes and new features designed to make it more appealing to corporate customers. In October, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court in which they stated that Microsoft had violated an agreement signed in 1994, and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. In 1998, Microsoft released an update to the consumer version of Windows, Windows 98. Windows 98 came with Internet Explorer 4.0 SP1 (which had Windows Desktop Update bundled), and included new features from Windows 95 OSR 2.x including the FAT32 file system, and new features specifically for Windows 98, such as support for multiple displays. Microsoft also launched its Indian headquarters that year, which would eventually become the company's second largest after its U.S. headquarters. Steve Ballmer was appointed president of Microsoft, and Bill Gates remained as Chair and CEO. Later in 1999, Microsoft Office 2000 was released, along with Internet Explorer 5.0.

2000–05: legal issues, XP, and .NET

Internet Explorer 5.0. The largest Microsoft campus outside the United States.]] On May 18, 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice and 20 U.S. states filed charges against Microsoft, stating that Microsoft illegally abused its monopoly power in its sales of Windows, in United States v. Microsoft. However, it was not until April 3, 2000 that a ruling was made that Microsoft had to be split into two companies. However, in June 2001, part of that ruling was overturned by a federal appeals court, and in September the Justice Department decided to seek a settlement with Microsoft instead of trying to split it up. While the trial was underway, on February 17, 2000 Microsoft released Windows 2000, which some consider a significant improvement over previous versions. It provided a similar OS stability to that of its Unix counterparts. Unlike previous consumer-level operating systems, Windows 2000 was built on the Windows NT kernel, rather than the DOS kernel as previous consumer versions of Windows had been. Windows 2000 also provided a DOS emulator that could run most old DOS applications from previous versions of Windows. During the trial, Bill Gates stepped down as CEO and Steve Ballmer became the new CEO, with Bill Gates remaining chairman and Chief Software Architect. In the same year, Microsoft released a new version of the consumer version of their flagship product, Windows Me, (Millennium Edition). Widely regarded as one of the most unstable operating systems Microsoft had ever produced, its main features were enhanced multimedia capabilities, such as an automated video editor. In June, the company released a new version of its hand-held operating system, Windows CE 3.0. The main change was the new programming APIs of the software. Previous versions of Windows CE supported only a small subset of the WinAPI, the main development library for windows, and with Version 3 of Windows CE, the operating system now supported nearly all of the core functionality of the WinAPI. In 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, which brought the consumer and business lines of Windows together, combining the kernel of Windows 2000 with features of its consumer line of Windows, and enhancing the DOS emulation capabilities of the OS. Among the new features was an entirely new interface. However, it included the controversial Microsoft Product Activation, a part of that software that required people to register with Microsoft before using the product for the first time, and if they did not the product would cease to function. This would become a hallmark of the Company's other products, including Microsoft Office. Microsoft Product Activation In 2003, Microsoft launched the .NET initiative, along with new versions of some of its development products, such as Microsoft Visual Studio. The initiative has been an entirely new development API for Windows programming, and includes a new programming language, C#. Windows Server 2003 was launched, featuring enhanced administration capabilities, such as new user interfaces to server tools. In 2004, the Company released Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, a version of Windows XP specifically designed for multimedia capabilities, and Windows XP Starter Edition, a version of Windows XP with a smaller feature set designed for entry-level consumers. In March 2004, the European Union brought legal action against Microsoft for antitrust violations. Eventually Microsoft was fined $613 million, ordered to divulge certain protocols to competitors, and to produce a version of Windows that did not include the Windows Media Player. Microsoft announced a new version of its MSN search service later in 2005, designed to compete with Google.

Product divisions

Microsoft sells a wide range of products, many of them developed internally, such as Microsoft BASIC and Microsoft Word. Others were acquired and rebranded by Microsoft:
- Microsoft Project, a project management package;
- Visio, a charting package;
- FoxPro, a database;
- Links, a golf game;
- Visual SourceSafe, a developer's tool;
- DoubleSpace, a compression tool;
- Virtual PC, software to emulate different version of Windows, which was acquired from Connectix; and
- MS-DOS itself, the basis for the company's success. Many of these products have undergone continual development by the Company. Internet Explorer is based on code licensed from Spyglass, Inc.; the initial development of the software was performed outside Redmond in Spyglass headquarters. In April 2002, Microsoft reorganized into seven core business groups—'each an independent financial entity—to delegate all responsibility and more closely track the performance of each unit. On September 20th, 2005, Microsoft announced a rationalization of its original seven business groups to three core divisions: the Windows Client, MSN and Server and Tool groups were merged into the Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division; the Information Worker and Microsoft Business Solutions groups were merged into the Microsoft Business Division; and the Mobile and Embedded Devices and Home and Entertainment groups were merged into the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division.

Microsoft Platform Products & Services Division

2005 This division produces Microsoft's flagship product, the Windows operating system. It has been produced in many versions, including Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Almost all IBM compatible personal computers designed for the consumer come with Windows preinstalled. The next planned version of Windows is Windows Vista (code-named Windows Longhorn). The online service MSN, the cable television station MSNBC, and the Microsoft online magazine Slate are all part of this division. Slate was later acquired by The Washington Post on December 21, 2004. At the end of 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail, the first and most popular webmail service, which it rebranded as "MSN Hotmail". Later in 1999 Microsoft introduced MSN Messenger, an instant messaging client, to compete with the popular AOL Instant Messenger. Microsoft Visual Studio is the company's set of programming tools and compilers. The software product is GUI-oriented and links easily with the Windows APIs, but must be specially configured if used with non-Microsoft libraries. The current version is Visual Studio .NET 2003, named after the .NET initiative, a Microsoft marketing initiative covering a number of technologies. Microsoft's definition of .NET continues to evolve. As of 2004, .NET aims to ease the development of Microsoft Windows-based applications that use the Internet, by deploying a new Microsoft communications system, Indigo. This will address some issues previously introduced by Microsoft's DLL design, which made it difficult to manage, install multiple versions of complex software packages on the same system (see DLL-hell), and provide a more consistent development platform for all Windows applications (see Common Language Infrastructure. In addition, the Company established a set of certification programs to recognize individuals who have expertise in its software and solutions. Similar to offerings from Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Novell, IBM, and Oracle Corporation, these tests are designed to identify a minimal set of proficiencies in a specific role; this includes developers ("Microsoft Certified Solution Developer"), system/network analysts ("Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer"), trainers ("Microsoft Certified Trainers") and administrators ("Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator"). Microsoft offers a suite of server software, entitled Windows Server System. Windows Server 2003, an operating system for network servers, is the core of the Windows Server System line. Another server product, Systems Management Server, is a collection of tools providing remote-control abilities, patch management, software distribution, and a hardware/software inventory. Other server products include:
- SQL Server, a relational database management system;
- Exchange Server, for certain business-oriented e-mail features;
- Small Business Server, for messaging and other small business-oriented features; and
- BizTalk Server, for employee integration assistance and other functions.

Microsoft Business Division

BizTalk Server The Microsoft Business Division produces Microsoft Office, which is the company's line of office software. The software product includes:
- Word, a word processor;
- Access, a personal relational database application;
- Excel, a spreadsheet program;
- Outlook, Windows-only groupware, frequently used with the Exchange server;
- PowerPoint, presentation software; and Microsoft FrontPage, a WYSIWYG HTML editor. With the release of Office 2003, a number of other products were brought under the Office banner, including Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Project, Microsoft MapPoint, Microsoft InfoPath, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft OneNote. The division focuses on developing financial and business management software for companies. These products include products formerly produced by the Business Solutions Group, which was created in April 2001 with the acquisition of Great Plains. Subsequently, Navision was acquired to provide a similar entry into the European market, resulting in the planned release of Microsoft Navision 4.0 during the week of 18 October, 2004. The group markets Axapta and Solomon, catering to similar markets, which is scheduled to be combined with the Navision and Great Plains lines into a common platform called Microsoft Dynamics.

Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division

Microsoft Dynamics Microsoft has attempted to expand the Windows brand into many other markets, with products such as Windows CE for PDAs and its "Windows-powered" Smartphone products. Microsoft initially entered the mobile market through Windows CE for handheld devices, which today has developed into Windows Mobile 5. The focus of the operating system is on devices where the OS may not directly be visible to the end user, in particular, appliances and cars. The company produces MSN TV, formerly WebTV, a television-based Internet appliance. Microsoft used to sell a set-top Digital Video Recorder (DVR) called the UltimateTV, which allowed users to record up to 35 hours of television programming from a direct-to-home satellite television provider DirecTV. This was the main competition in the UK for bSKYb's SKY + service, owned by Rupert Murdoch. UltimateTV has since been discontinued, with DirecTV instead opting to market DVRs from TiVo Inc. The division includes consumer and Macintosh software, along with computer hardware and entertainment software. Microsoft sells computer games that run on Windows PCs, including titles such as Age of Empires and the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. It produces a line of reference works that include encyclopedias and atlases, under the name Encarta. Microsoft Zone hosts free premium and retail games where players can compete against each other and in tournaments. Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo in late 2001, with the release of the Xbox. As of 2005, the console ranks second to Sony's PlayStation 2 and ahead of Nintendo's GameCube in market share in the United States (although behind the two worldwide). The console shipped 22 million units compared with competitor PlayStation 2 at 90 million units, and the company took a 4 billion dollar loss due to the console . Microsoft develops and publishes its own video games for this console, with the help of its Microsoft Game Studios subsidiary, in addition to "third party" Xbox video-game publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision, who pay a license fee to publish games for the system. The most recent version of the Xbox is the Xbox 360. Microsoft markets a number of computing-related hardware products, including mice, keyboards, joysticks, and gamepads, along with other game controllers, the production of which is outsourced in most cases. The division houses Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, the largest developer of Macintosh software outside Apple itself; it produces such software as Microsoft Office for the Mac (sometimes called "Macintosh Office"), which includes Entourage, a Macintosh-specific application not available in the Windows version of Microsoft Office.

Business culture

Entourage Microsoft has often been described as having a developer-centric business culture. A great deal of time and money is spent each year on recruiting young university-trained software developers who meet very exacting criteria, and on keeping them in the company. For example, while many software companies often place an entry-level software developer in a cubicle desk within a large office space filled with other cubicles, Microsoft assigns a private or semiprivate closed office to every developer or pair of developers. In addition, key decision makers at every level are either developers or former developers. In a sense, the software developers at Microsoft are considered the "stars" of the company in the same way that the sales staff at IBM are considered the "stars" of their company. This culture is reflected in their hiring process—the "Microsoft Interview" is notorious for off-the-wall questions such as "Why is a manhole cover round?" and is a process often mimicked in other organizations. Note that, although they were once ubiquitous, recently fewer interviewers have been using these types of questions. Within Microsoft the expression "eating our own dog food" is used to describe the policy of using the latest Microsoft products inside the company in an effort to test them in "real-world" situations. Only prerelease and beta versions of products are considered dog food. This is usually shortened to just "dog food" and is used as noun, verb, and adjective. For fun, Microsoft also hosts the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt, an annual puzzle hunt (a live puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles) held at the Redmond campus. It is a spin-off of the MIT Mystery Hunt. In an ever changing world, Microsoft expects its employees to be comfortable with ambiguity. They may not, for example, know with any degree of certainty when a product will ship, what it will be called, or what features will be included. The business culture expects agile thinkers to rapidly adjust to dramatic changes. Microsoft also fosters a general attitude of long-term strategic wariness in its managers, who are expected to be ready for any challenge from the competition or the market. In this frame of mind, being the largest software company in the world is not seen as a form of safety or a guarantee of future success. For instance, future competitors could rise from other industries, or computer hardware companies could try to become less dependent on Microsoft, or consumers could decide not to upgrade their software as often. Microsoft requires its managers to maintain vigilance and sustain a dynamic expansion in new markets.

User culture

Technical reference for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines such as Microsoft Systems Journal (or MSJ) is available through Microsoft's MSDN site, short for Microsoft Developer Network. MSDN also offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions usually offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software. In recent years, Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, entitled Channel9, which provides many modern features such as a wiki and an Internet forum. Most free technical support available through Microsoft is provided through online Usenet newsgroups (in the early days it was also provided on Compuserve). There are several of these newsgroups for nearly every product Microsoft provides, and often they are monitored by Microsoft employees. People who are helpful on the newsgroups can be elected by other peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles people to a sort of special social status, in addition to possibilities for awards and other benefits.

Corporate affairs

Corporate structure

The company is run by its Board of Directors, which consists of ten people, made up of mostly company outsiders (as is customary for publicly traded companies). Current members of the board of directors of Microsoft are: Steve Ballmer, James Cash, Jr., Dina Dublon, Bill Gates, Raymond Gilmartin, Ann Korologos, David Marquardt, Charles Noski, Helmut Panke, and Jon Shirley. The ten board members are elected every year at the annual shareholders' meeting, and those who do not get a majority of votes must submit a resignation to the board, which will subsequently choose whether or not to accept the resignation. There are five committees within the board which have oversight over more specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues with the company including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Finance Committee, which handles financial matters such as proposing mergers and acquisitions; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including nomination of the board; and the Antitrust Compliance Committee, which attempts to prevent company practices from violating antitrust laws. There are several other aspects to the corporate structure of Microsoft. For worldwide matters there is the Executive Team, made up of sixteen company officers across the globe, which is charged with various duties including making sure employees understand Microsoft's culture of business. The sixteen officers of the Executive Team include the Chairman and Chief Software Architect, the CEO, the General Counsel and Secretary, the CFO, senior and group vice presidents from the business units, the CEO of the Europe, the Middle East and Africa regions; and the heads of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Services; Human Resources; and Corporate Marketing. In addition to the Executive Team there is also the Corporate Staff Council, which handles all major staff functions of the company, including approving corporate policies. The Corporate Staff Council is made up of employees from the Law and Corporate Affairs, Finance, Human Resources, Corporate Marketing, and Advanced Strategy and Policy groups at Microsoft. Other Executive Officers include the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the various product divisions, leaders of the marketing section, and the CTO, among others.

Stock

When the company debuted its IPO in March 12, 1986, the stock price was $22. By the close of the first trading day, the stock had closed at twenty-eight dollars, or 97c, compared with the time period after the company's first nine splits. The initial close and ensuing rise in subsequent years made several Microsoft employees millions. The stock price peaked in 1999 at around 119 dollars (60,928 dollars adjusting for splits). While the company has had nine stock splits, the first of which was in September 18, 1987, the company did not start offering a dividend until January 16, 2003. The dividend for the 2003 fiscal year was eight cents per share, followed by a dividend of sixteen cents per share the subsequent year. The company switched from quarterly to yearly dividends in 2005, for eight cents a share per quarter with a special one-time payout of three dollars per share for the second quarter of the fiscal year. Around 2002 the stock price began a slow descent that continued through 2005. The company had its ninth split on February 2, 2003, in what could have been an attempt to arouse interest in the stock, but the price continued to stagnate regardless. On the September 23, 2005, episode of CNBC's Mad Money, the host of the show, Jim Cramer, called Microsoft's stock "the most hated stock on Wall Street".

Diversity

Microsoft received a 86% rating in the 2004 Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign relating to its policies concerning LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) employees. According to the Human Rights Campaign, this was in line with the industry standard . Through the work of the Gay and Lesbian Employees at Microsoft (GLEAM) group and Diversity, Microsoft added gender expression to its antidiscrimination policies in April 2005, and the Human Rights Campaign upgraded Microsoft's Corporate Equality Index rating to 100%, putting it among the most progressive companies in the world. Microsoft also received criticism from the Human Rights Campaign and many others in April 2005 for withdrawing support for Washington's H.B. 1515 bill that would extend the state's current antidiscrimination laws to people with alternate sexual orientations. However, under harsh criticism from both outside and inside the company's walls, Microsoft eventually supported the bill again in May 2005 . Even though it hires many domestic American workers, Microsoft generally goes up to the annual limit in hiring foreign workers with H1B visas. Bill Gates has criticized Congress for the cap on the H1B visas, which he claims makes it difficult to hire employees for the company. Proponents of the cap cite economic and security reasons for the current law. Microsoft was also named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mother magazine.

Logo

Working Mother In 1987, Microsoft adopted its current logo, the so-called "Pacman Logo" designed by Scott Baker. According to the March 1987 Computer Reseller News Magazine, "The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the "soft" part of the name and convey motion and speed." Employees ran a campaign to save the old logo, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter O nicknamed the blibbet, but it was nevertheless discarded.

Criticism

Working Mother Microsoft has been the focus of much controversy in the computer industry, especially since the 1980s; in particular, which some some think its business tactics as unfair and anticompetitive. Some describe Microsoft's business tactics as "embrace, extend and extinguish", in which Microsoft initially embraces and extends a competing standard or product, only to later extinguish it through such actions as writing their own incompatible version of the software or standard. Microsoft has also been called a "velvet sweatshop" in reference to the company working its employees to the point where it might be bad for their health. The first instance of the term in reference to Microsoft originated from a Seattle Times article in 1989, and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft's own employees. In rulings following antitrust litigation, U.S. courts ruled that Microsoft is an abusive monopoly, and the company endures legal attacks along these lines in many countries around the world; these are successful to varying degrees, but have not yet forced serious reform such as forcing a separation of the company. Some also accuse Microsoft of allowing the user interface of its products to become inconsistent and overly complicated, requiring interactive "wizards" to function as an extra layer between the user and the interface. The security of Microsoft products (such as Internet Explorer) is also questioned by some as being overly vulnerable to computer viruses and malicious attacks. In addition, proponents of free software are engaged with Microsoft in a debate over the Total cost of ownership (TCO) of its products, as some perceive Microsoft software as more expensive to purchase, use and maintain than competitors' software. A July, 2003 article in the New York Times, accused Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, of stealing ideas for the development of Windows from its competitor, Apple. Microsoft has also been criticized for its end user license agreements, which some believe are too restrictive. As detailed in this article, Microsoft has purchased the products of many other companies to market as its own. It has also duplicated the innovations of other companies (Apple in particular) in products which have in many cases gone on

PC compatible

model 5150.]] IBM PC compatible refers to a class of computers which make up the vast majority of smaller computers (microcomputers) on the market today. They are based (without IBM's participation) on the original IBM PC. They use the Intel x86 architecture (or an architecture made to emulate it) and are capable of using interchangeable commodity hardware. These computers also used to be referred to as PC clones, and nowadays, just PCs. In addition, most modern x86 server-class machines are IBM PC compatible, being essentially a more robust version of the modern desktop PC.

History

Origins

The origins of this platform came with the decision by IBM in 1980 to market a personal computer as quickly as possible in response to Apple Computer's rapid success in the burgeoning market for low-cost single-user computers — what later came to be known as the "personal computer market". On 12 August 1981, the first IBM-PC went on sale. There were several operating systems available for it but the best remembered is DOS (the cheapest). IBM licensed DOS from Microsoft; IBM's version was called PC-DOS and was sold as an "add-on" to the IBM PC. In a crucial concession almost unnoticed by either party at the time, IBM's agreement also allowed Microsoft to sell its version MS-DOS for non-IBM platforms. Also, in creating the platform, IBM used only one proprietary component: The BIOS. Columbia copied the IBM PC and produced the first 'compatible' (i.e., more or less compatible to the IBM PC standard) PC in 1982. Compaq Computer Corp. produced its first IBM PC compatible a few months later in 1982 — the Compaq Portable. The Compaq was not only the first "sewing machine-sized" portable PC but, even more important, was the first essentially 100% PC-compatible computer. The company could not directly copy the BIOS as a result of the court decision in Apple v. Franklin, but it could reverse-engineer the IBM BIOS and then write its own BIOS using clean room design. Compaq became a very successful PC manufacturer, and was bought out by Hewlett-Packard in 2002.

Compatibility issues

Simultaneously, many manufacturers such as Xerox, Digital, and Sanyo introduced PCs that were, although x86- and MS-DOS-based, not completely hardware-compatible with the IBM PC. While such decisions seem foolish in retrospect, it is not always appreciated just how fast the rise of the IBM clone market was, and the degree to which it took the industry by surprise. Later, in 1987, IBM itself would launch the PS/2 line of personal computers which was only software compatible with the PC architecture; this was also hugely unsuccessful. Microsoft's intention, and the mindset of the industry from 1981 to as late as the mid-1980s, was that application writers would write to the API's in MS-DOS, and in some cases to the firmware BIOS, and that these components would form what would now be called a hardware abstraction layer. Each computer would have its own OEM version of MS-DOS, customized to its hardware. Any piece of software written for MS-DOS would run on any MS-DOS computer, regardless of variations in hardware design. During this time MS-DOS was sold only as an OEM product. There was no Microsoft-branded MS-DOS, MS-DOS could not be purchased directly from Microsoft, and the manual's cover had the corporate color and logo of the PC vendor. Bugs were to be reported to the OEM, not to Microsoft. However, in the case of the clones, it soon became clear that the OEM versions of MS-DOS were virtually identical, except perhaps for the provision of a few utility programs. MS-DOS provided adequate support for character-oriented applications, such as those that could have been implemented on a minicomputer and a Digital VT100 terminal. Had the bulk of commercially important software fallen within these bounds, hardware compatibility might not have mattered. However, from the very beginning, many significant pieces of popular commercial software wrote directly to the hardware, for a variety of reasons:
- Communications software directly accessed the UART chip, because the MS-DOS API and the BIOS did not provide full support for the chip's capabilities.
- Graphics capability was not taken seriously. It was considered to be an exotic or novelty function. MS-DOS didn't have an API for graphics, and the BIOS only included the most rudimentary of graphics functions (such as changing screen modes and plotting single points); having to make a BIOS call for every point drawn or modified also increased overhead considerably, making the BIOS interface notoriously slow. Because of this, line-drawing, arc-drawing, and blitting had to be performed by the application, and this was usually done by bypassing the BIOS and accessing video memory directly. Games, of course, used graphics. They also performed any machine-dependent trick the programmers could think of in order to gain speed. Thus, games were machine-dependent — and games turned out to be important in driving PC purchases.
- Even for staid business applications, speed of execution was a significant competitive advantage. This was shown dramatically by Lotus 1-2-3's competitive knockout of rival Context MBA. The latter, now almost forgotten, preceded Lotus to market, included more functions, was written in Pascal, and was highly portable. It was also too slow to be really usable on a PC. Lotus was written in pure assembly language and performed some machine-dependent tricks. It was so much faster that Context MBA was dead as soon as Lotus arrived.
- Disk copy-protection schemes, popular at the time, worked by reading nonstandard data patterns on the diskette to verify originality. These patterns were difficult or impossible to detect using standard DOS or BIOS calls, so direct access to the disk controller hardware was necessary for the protection to work.
- The microcomputer programming culture at the time was hacker-like, and enjoyed discovering and exploiting undocumented properties of the system. At first, other than Compaq's models, few "compatibles" really lived up to their claim. "95% compatibility" was seen as excellent. Reviewers and users developed suites of programs to test compatibility, generally including Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Flight Simulator, the two most popular "stress tests." Gradually vendors discovered not only how to emulate the IBM BIOS, but the places where they needed to use identical hardware chips to perform key functions within the system. Eventually, the Phoenix BIOS and similar commercially-available products permitted computer makers to build essentially 100%-compatible clones without having to reverse-engineer the IBM PC BIOS themselves. Meanwhile, IBM damaged its own franchise by failing to appreciate the importance of "IBM compatibility," when they introduced products such as the IBM Portable (essentially a Compaq Portable knockoff), and later the PCjr, which had significant incompatibilities with the mainline PCs. By the mid-to-late 1980s buyers began to regard PCs as commodity items, and became skeptical as to whether the security blanket of the IBM name warranted the price differential. Meanwhile the incompatible Xeroxes and Digitals and Wangs were left in the dust. Nobody cared that they ran MS-DOS; the issue was that they did not run off-the-shelf software written for IBM compatibles.

The declining influence of IBM

Since 1981, IBM PC compatibles have dominated both the home and business markets of commodity computers, with the only notable alternative architecture being the Apple Macintosh computers, which have a market share of only a few percent. However, IBM itself lost the leadership role in the market for IBM PC compatibles almost two decades before its complete withdrawal from the PC market in April 2005. Three events in retrospect are likely turning points:
- Compaq beating IBM to the market in 1986 with the first 80386-based PC.
- IBM's 1987 introduction of incompatible technologies, such as its proprietary MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) bus, in its PS/2 line.
- The 1988 introduction by the "Gang of Nine" companies of a rival Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) bus aimed at toppling, rather than copying, MCA. Dell and Hewlett-Packard hold the largest shares of the PC market in North America. They are also successful overseas, with Acer, Lenovo, and Toshiba also notable. Despite advances in computer technology, all current IBM PC compatibles remain very much compatible with the original IBM PC computers, although most of the components implement the compatibility in special backward compatibility modes used only during a system boot.

Expandability

One of the strengths of the PC compatible platform is its modular design. This meant that if a component became obsolete, only an individual component had to be upgraded and not the whole computer as was the case with many of the microcomputers of the time. As long as applications used operating system calls and did not write to the hardware directly, the existing applications would work. However, MS-DOS (the dominant operating system of the time) did not have support for many calls for multimedia-hardware, and the BIOS was also inadequate. Various attempts to standardise the interfaces were made, but in practice, many of these attempts were either flawed or ignored. Even so, there were many expansion options, and the PC compatible platform advanced much faster than other competing platforms of the time.

"IBM PC Compatible" becomes "Wintel"

In the 1990s, IBM's influence on PC architecture became increasingly irrelevant. Instead of focusing on staying compatible with the IBM-PC, vendors began to focus on compatibility with the evolution of Microsoft Windows. No vendor dares to be incompatible with the latest version of Windows, and Microsoft's annual WinHEC conferences provide a setting in which Microsoft can lobby for and in some cases dictate the pace and direction of the hardware side of the PC industry. The term "IBM PC Compatible" is on the wane. Ordinary consumers simply refer to the machines as "PCs," while programmers and industry writers are increasingly using the term "Wintel architecture" ("Wintel" being a portmanteau combination of "Windows" and "Intel") to refer to the combined hardware-software platform. This term may be a bit of a misnomer as more PC manufacturers are beginning to use AMD CPUs.

The breakthrough in entertainment software

The original IBM PC was not designed with games in mind. The monochrome graphics and very simple sound made it unsuitable for multimedia applications. That, and the fact that it was priced out of the entertainment market, made it seem unlikely that the PC platform would be used for games. As the technology of the PC advanced, games started to appear for the PC. At first, these were inferior to the games for other platforms. Thanks to the modular design, the technology behind the PC advanced rapidly. What PC games lacked in multimedia capabilities, they made up for in raw speed. A few years later, VGA cards started to appear. These offered 256-colour graphics out of a palette of 262144. At around this time, sound-cards started to appear. They improved the beeping sounds of the PC speaker to give a more rich sound. By the time the PC had superior hardware to the competing platforms of the time, it still was not taken seriously as a games machine. This could have been caused by the higher price, or the fact that video game consoles rather than personal computers were now starting to attract gamers, or it could have been that the hardware was very awkward to program for, and required the development of different drivers for all the multimedia hardware. The PC platform did not manage to create a cult-following as the other platforms had done. At the time, there was a demo scene on the PC but it was small, did not appear until many years after the original IBM PC and demos were few and far between. The lack of a demo scene meant that there were few programmers who knew how to get the most out of the machine. One thing that PCs did have in their favour was raw processing power. This made them suitable for 3D games. The PC made a breakthrough as a games machine when Doom was released in 1993 thanks to its outstanding graphics and gameplay. Because networking hardware was widespread on PCs, Doom also offered multiplayer support across a network. Few games offered that at the time. Doom finally established the PC as a games-machine.

Design flaws and more compatibility issues

When the PC was originally designed, even though it was designed for expandability, even the designers of the original IBM PC could not take into account the hardware-developments of the '80s. By the late '80s, IBM, the creator of the IBM PC, hardly had much say, and a lot of other companies were trying to push their standards. To make things worse, IBM, Intel and Microsoft introduced several design flaws which created hurdles for developing the PC compatible platform. One example of such a design flaw was the DOS 640k barrier (memory below 640k is known as conventional memory). This was partly to do with the way IBM mapped the memory of the PC (see the article on the Upper Memory Area for more), and partly because the memory-management of DOS (which was the most widely used operating system) had a way of dealing with it that made things worse. In order to expand PCs beyond one megabyte, EMS was devised to allow access to the memory above 1 megabyte. However, once Intel released the 80286 processor, an alternative memory management scheme was introduced — XMS. EMS and XMS were originally incompatible, so anyone writing software that used more than one megabyte had to support both systems. Graphics cards suffered from their own incompatibilities. Once graphics cards advanced to SVGA level, the standard for accessing them was no longer clear. At the time, PC programming involved using a memory model that had 64KB memory segments. The standard VGA graphics modes used screen memory that fitted into a single memory segment. SVGA modes required more memory, so accessing the full screen memory was tricky. Each manufacturer developed their own ways of accessing the screen-memory and even numbering the new graphics modes. This meant that the manufacturers needed to develop device drivers in software that allowed the SVGA modes to be used by a program that accesses the graphics-card at the driver level. Unfortunately, there was no standard for device-drivers that all manufacturers followed. An attempt at creating a standard called VESA was made, but not all manufacturers adhered to it. To make things worse, the manufacturers' drivers often had bugs. To work around them, the application developers had to write their own drivers for the cards with buggy drivers. Programming the PC was a nightmare. It put many hobbyists off, and may have been responsible for the slow take-off of the PC as a multimedia platform. When developing for the PC, a large test-suite of various hardware combinations was needed to make sure the software was compatible with as many PC configurations as possible. Eventually, a new memory-model was devised — DPMI. It offered a flat memory model and made life for programmers easier. Meanwhile, consumers were overwhelmed by the many different combinations of hardware on offer. To give the consumer some idea of what sort of PC would be needed to run a given piece of software, the Multimedia PC standard (or MPC) was set in 1990. It meant that a PC that met the minimum MPC standard could be considered an MPC. Software that could run on a minimalistic MPC-compliant PC would be guaranteed to run on any MPC. The MPC level 2 and MPC level 3 standards were later set, but the term "MPC compliant" never caught on. After MPC level 3 in 1996, no further MPC standards were set.

The rise of Windows

Microsoft announced Windows 1.0 in November 1983, but wasn't able to get it out the door until 1985. It wasn't successful. The same thing happened in 1987 with the launch of Windows 2.0; followed by the launch of Windows/286 and Windows/386 in 1988. It is probably the lack of success of these early versions of Windows that threw IBM and Microsoft together to produce their version of the future with OS/2 in 1987 (it was launched with IBM's PS/2). At the launch Bill Gates is quoted as saying "DOS is dead". OS/2 had been written from scratch by Microsoft and IBM (with IBM taking the lions share) and was vastly superior to the DOS based Microsoft Windows. But OS/2 had a problem (amongst many, it turned out); it was written for the 80286 processor. The 80386 had been launched the year before and, according to Intel Chairman Gordon Moore, Intel had told IBM that the 386 would be ready in time for OS/2 shipping, Moore says IBM didn't believe him and carried on writing OS/2 for the 286. When the 386 was launched in September 1986 it left OS/2 seriously underpowered. Then, making things worse, IBM and Microsoft didn't deliver OS/2's various 'extra bits' (namely Presentation Manager - the Windows like front end for OS/2). Despite Microsoft and IBM saying "DOS was dead" users wholeheartedly stuck with it. Thus by 1990 the market — and the technology on the PC platform — was ready for something new. Microsoft was still working with IBM when it launched Windows 3.0 and — according to Gates — it sold twice as many copies as Microsoft had expected. Windows 3.0 sat 'on top' of DOS; thus users would load DOS on their machine and then load Windows. This allowed users to swap between DOS and Windows rather than picking just one environment, making the gradual move to Windows possible. Windows 3.0 resembled Apple Computer's System 7 (Microsoft went as far as hiring Apple employees in its Windows design team) and revolutionised the way users 'used' their PCs. In the past, users had typed in commands into the MS-DOS interface (a Command Line Interface or CLI) where now they had a Graphical User Interface GUI which used a mouse to point to small pictures of tasks icons to 'make things happen'. Windows 3.0 was followed by Windows 3.1 in 1991 and eventually Microsoft, realising that users wanted to network their PCs, included standard network protocols into a newer 3.11 version. With the two companies still working together in the early 1990's the success of Windows 3.0 — and the relative failure of OS/2 — caused some friction. According to Gates, IBM said to Microsoft that it should drop Windows and work solely on OS/2. Microsoft declined and eventually the two split; Microsoft took its code for OS/2 3.0 — codenamed OS/2 NT (for New Technology) with it. OS/2 NT would mutate into Windows NT and therefore into Windows 2000 and XP. Windows NT was launched in 1993. It was a parallel development to Windows for DOS, aimed at the server market it was supposed to be a fully professional system that wouldn't rely on DOS. At this time take up was very small, the system was power hungry and had few applications. Development of the traditional Windows platform continued, adding more features, standardised protocols and building on hardware support, and in 1995 Windows 95 was born. Before Windows 95, games and gaming were a totally MS DOS experience. Users had to tolerate rebooting into DOS, fiddling with memory (see the 640k barrier) and reconfiguring their PC every time they wanted to load a game. Windows 95 provided a system called DirectX which allowed programmers access to a standard API to perform video and sound card calls from Windows, revolutionising the games arena. For the first time, a PC programmer could benefit from Windows 95s memory management capabilities and extended functionality, and have API access to the graphics and sound cards - of which there were many versions and drivers. 3D graphics were possible from within Windows, (for those with 3Dfx cards) and now Network Multiplayer 3D graphics games were in the realms of possibility to almost every programmer. Windows 95 was replaced with Windows 98 in 1998 then with Windows 98SE (Second Edition) in 1999. It was Microsoft's intention to combine its Windows NT and Windows 9x (as the various versions of Windows 95 to ME were called) operating systems and the phasing out of the Windows 9x operating systems. At first Microsoft were to finish the 9x line with Windows 98SE but when it was apparent that its NT line needed more power than the average 9x PC could deliver, the phasing out was delayed and Microsoft launched an 'interim' version of Windows: Windows ME (Millennium Edition) in 2000. In February 2000 the latest version of Windows NT was released called Windows 2000 and finally began to show signs that it could exist on the PC desktop. And in October 2001 Windows XP was launched, this was to replace all previous versions of Windows and, at time of writing (Jul 2005), has had two service pack updates and is not expected to be replaced by the next version of Windows — called Windows Vista — until 2006.

Challenges to Wintel domination

The success of Windows had driven nearly all other rival commercial operating systems into near-extinction, and had ensured that the PC was the dominant computing platform. This meant that if a manufacturer only made their software for the Wintel platform, they would be able to reach out to the vast majority of computer users. By the mid to late 1990s, introducing a rival operating system had become too risky a commercial venture. Experience had shown that even if an operating system was superior to Windows, it would be a failure. However, a free operating system was being developed by enthusiasts — Linux. Because they were doing it for fun, they were not concerned with taking risks. Despite the fact that Microsoft programmers were programming for a living and the programmers working on Linux were programming in their spare time, Linux became a first class product. The sheer number of contributors to the Linux project allowed development effort comparable to that of the Microsoft programmers. After a cou