VB Programing support Access Database Microsoft Office VB.Net & SQL Server nev@NevVB.com.au Sydney, Australia (02) 9453-0456 Contact Details 28/01/2012
The initial operating systems were all MS-DOS based – Windows 1.0 to Windows 3.1. Windows 95 was released in 1995 (funny that) by Microsoft in competition with IBM's OS/2 operating system. Microsoft quickly overtook the OS and GUI markets from the IBM PC. Windows 95 was a major improvement from the MS-DOS based operating systems and soon become the most successful operating system. It was followed by the equally successful Windows 98.
Windows XP, released in 2001, is now 10 years old. Despite its age, it is still used by more users than Vista and Windows 7 combined. Windows XP is fully functional and efficient – not with the gloss of Windows 7, but still solid and reliable.
The migration to Windows 7 has been limited by cost – a complete reinstall is needed, and usually new sound and video cards. And some legacy applications will not work.
But there are drawbacks to staying with Windows XP. The security is 10 years old, Internet Explorer 9 will not work, and Microsoft is soon to stop all support.
Vista was released in 2007, but was badly conceived. The need for a new operating system was evident – the Windows internals were showing their age. All the bits'n'pieces that has been cobbled together over the years needed a complete revamp. Frequent restarts were needed to reorganise fragmented memory, and to free chunks of unused memory.
Instead of concentrating on modernising the internals of Windows, Microsoft decided to revamp many features as well. The result was an operating system that took forever to arrive, was badly tuned, error prone, incompatible with previous code, had missing drivers – and worse of all, alienated the users.
After a few years, some of the problems have been resolved, but Vista was never fully accepted by the public or the corporate world.
Released in 2010, the latest Version from Microsoft has proven remarkably stable, with minimal problems. Most companies that avoided Windows Vista are likely to migrate to Windows 7 – now that the first Service Pack is available. Windows 7 is available in both a 32-bit version and a rather immature 64-bit version.
The best features are:
Windows 8 is scheduled to be released sometime around 2012. The design is still in flux. The new and controversial touch-based Metro Start screen is generating a large amount of criticism. There may be an option to use the classic Start Menu. Windows 8 has a new Task Manager to control applications.
Visual Basic developers will be able to program for the phone or the tablet, as well as for the PC.
There is an increasing divide between gloss (distracting backgrounds and large icons) for low-end users and simple functionality for developers.