Talk:Microsoft Windows

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Microsoft Windows has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.

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Discussion archive:
Archive 1: Article creation to December 31, 2005.

Contents 1 Invention of GUI 2 Pictures of Vista? 3 Removed picture from "See Also" section 4 No Windows 2003/XP x64 mentioned and WINE is not an emulator 5 thumbs.db 6 Relation between versions 7 GA 8 "Windows" article redirect issue 9 Vista as primary screenshot 10 Splash screens of various windows versions 11 Centro? 12 Windows 1.0 Abandonware? 13 Damned figures 14 Strange Comment 15 No evidence 16 Unsubstantiated? 17 NT genesis? 18 Please explain!!! 19 Little X Redirect 20 Why no Criticism Section? 21 Inclusion of Windows 9x as OS type 22 new article: Comparison of Windows versions? 23 Windows and OS/2 relations. 24 Arstechnica / sophos reference. 25 What's Windows Programmed in? 26 Common Sidebar for Windows articles 27 Consideration for replacement of logo on header 28 windows 29 possible article error

[edit] Invention of GUI

"Windows has produced a significant change in the way people interact with computers; it is possible to perform most common tasks, some quite complex, with very little computer knowledge." - mightn't this give some people the impression that MS invented the GUI? Thomas Ash

The corollary to that theorem is of course that it is quite impossible to perform the simplest tasks, even with a great deal of computer knowledge.—Kbolino 07:11, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

GUI technology has evolved. You could start with CDC Plato, which is almost never given the credit it deserves. Then the familiar Xerox PARC which inspired Apple and Microsoft. Microsoft has made major contributions to GUI, in particular the extensible GUI that evolved out of MS Office and became OLE Automation (consider what happenes when you install something like Via Voice or Systran, where new software integrates and modifies the interface of MS Word). And the use of scripting and interface prototyping with Visual Basic was hugely influential, inspiring many web-based interface scripting languages like javascript. DonPMitchell 06:28, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd like some references for what your saying Don P Mitchell. I don't want to commit an ad ignorantiam, but I've never heard any of that as being inspired by Microsoft. I'd consider myself fairly aware of the topic, for example I've read some papers by Brendan Eich, but I've never heard the conclusions your pulling up. I just don't connect Windows with founder of extensibilty.--Capi crimm 01:54, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures of Vista?

I think it would be good if there was a good picture (screenshot) of Windows Vista to show the evolution of Windows and what it is proposed to become. In fact, shots of Windows 3.1, Windows 98, 2000, ME, XP, and Vista would be even better, if they were side by side, in showing the changes in the UI over time. It's really been quite dramatic. Nicholasink 05:28, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

That is a good idea, but I think for Vista, we should wait for it's release.--Anupam Srivastava 14:05, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we can use some from beta vesion. --seXie^(t0lk) 21:54, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Shinobu 04:45, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed picture from "See Also" section

I removed a picture from the "See Also" section. It showed a teller machine with a Windows exception error message, but the description just stated that it ran Windows and nothing else regarding the message. Besides a picture not making sense in a "See Also" links section, that particular picture's NPOV is highly disputable. Spookfish 19:31, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No Windows 2003/XP x64 mentioned and WINE is not an emulator

I think Windows 2003 and Windows XP x64 need to be mentioned here. XP to Vista is totally misleading.

Also, http://sourceforge.net/projects/wine/ , Says "WINE is not an emulator," it is an API compatible with WIN32.

"WINE Is Not an Emulator" is the current official breakdown of the acronym, but what it really means is that WINE is not a hardware emulator or an emulation layer, but simply an API layer that in itself emulates the Windows APIs. --tonsofpcs _(Talk) 07:55, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe there has to be a more general headline for this section. After all bootcamp is also no emulator 134.225.183.173 02:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] thumbs.db

thumbs.db redirects to "Microsoft Windows", but it is not explained what thumbs.db is. --Abdull 12:04, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I never really looked into the subject, but isn't it a cache for thumbnails? I never see it unless the "Thumbnails" view is turned on for that folder. --Evice 19:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relation between versions

An image similar to the one below would improve the article.

—This unsigned comment was added by 193.166.18.45 (talk • contribs) .

See History of Microsoft Windows. It has such an image. Warrens 17:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA

Needs more references, but passes GA standards. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 03:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Windows" article redirect issue

There are some questions arising as to whether or not Windows should redirect to Microsoft Windows or Window (disambiguation). There are merits to both routes, so please give it some thought and chip in your thoughts at Talk:Windows. :-) Warrens 21:49, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I think that if a user types "Windows" in the search field, they should go to the disambiguation page. Just because Microsoft somehow convinced the feds to give them a trademark (!) doesn't mean that they have that same "right" to the word in Wikipedia. The Xerox Alto (1973), X Windows (1984), and the Macintosh (1984) were all around before Microsoft Windows. Branciforte3241 06:34, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vista as primary screenshot

The primary screenshot for this article should not be taken from Windows Vista. The appearance has not been finalized, the product has not been released, and it may never be released (though this is highly unlikely). The screenshot should probably be taken from Windows XP, as that is the current consumer- and business-oriented version of the operating system.—Kbolino 03:32, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

• Agreed, it's not even past beta 1, every previous Windows release had fairly large UI changes from Beta 1 to RTM. SchmuckyTheCat 05:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Now that's RTM'ed I've changed the screenshot. Paul Cyr 22:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splash screens of various windows versions

I added splash screens of Windows 1.01, Windows 3.11, Windows 98, and Windows 2000. It would be really nice if someone has a Windows XP 64 license and can take a screenshot of the splash screen for us. I also added a screen shot of the desktop of Windows 3.11. They were taken by my self using VMware's software. I hope they are placed appropriately and not too distracting for the reader. Yousifnet 06:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I've removed them. See Use of Microsoft Copyrighted Content, where it states "Except for Microsoft product boot-up screens, opening screens, "splash screens," or screens from products that have not been commercially released (including beta versions), you may use screen shots in advertising, in documentation (including educational brochures), in tutorial books, in videotapes, or on Web sites". It's unfortunate, and I don't like having to do it, because the screenshots are nice... but we have to adhere to these things as part of our collective responsibility in creating a free encyclopedia. Warrens 19:47, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, yes. I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I will remove the splash screens I posting in Windows 1.0, Windows 3.1x, Windows 98 and Windows 2000. It did take a while for me to make them, but as they say, the law is the law :). Yousifnet 22:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand. The Microsoft language says that you CAN use those screen shots, except for Vista. You need to attach a short disclaimer stating that Microsoft gave permission. Branciforte3241 05:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Centro?

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/sep05/09-06Infrastructure.mspx --Snori 22:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It's got a brief mention in the Windows Server "Longhorn" article. Warrens 23:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windows 1.0 Abandonware?

Is Windows 1.0 Abandonware? And if it is, where can it be downloaded?

• Abandonware has no legal meaning. It is unlikely any legitimate site wants to risk Microsofts anti-piracy unit. SchmuckyTheCat 17:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Damned figures

I changed the intro slightly becasue I felt is was misleading. The reference from IDC needs to be put in historical perspective as the article was from 2004 which at the time of me writing is over 2 years ago. I propose that this is left in unless someone can come up with a more current reference.

I also don't know what help having market share quoted is going to help either in anyone understanding the penetration of the OS. A better figure to represent how many people are actually using Windows would be prefereable imho. The installed user base for Windows is lower than 90% I'm certain.

Candy 10:35, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Strange Comment

"The widespread use of Microsoft's operating system has benefited from not being tied to the success of one hardware manufacturer and from Microsoft's willingness to license the operating system to manufacturers. This is in contrast with Apple Computer, which does not license Mac OS X to other manufacturers. However, the wide spectrum of possible hardware permutations with Microsoft Windows is also seen as a major source of computer problems because of hardware/software incompatibilities for consumers." Not certain why the comparison to Apple Computer. The comment refers to Microsoft's Operating system (which clearly also includes MS DOS) and it's not clear whether the author means this or not. Furthermore, it refers to market penetration which occurred well before Mac OS X was created so the comparison also seems to be lost. Perhaps just remove the"Apple" comment or clarify the whole part and tidy it up.

Candy 10:48, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No evidence

"Due to the widespread usage of Windows on personal computers, many malicious developers have targeted Windows rather than the lesser used operating systems such as Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD[citation needed]."

This is pure speculation and somthing that needs editing. The assumption made here is that Windows is targetted more because it is widespread and not because of inherent security problems. I would like to see some evidence of this besides pure speculation. I often read this in the Computer Press but have NEVER seen any evidence for it. It seems to be an oft repeated assumption as well. I am not stating that Windows is targeted more because of its security issues becasue I also don't have evidence of this either. I think it is fair to say though that Windows is more heavily targeted with attacks Perhaps someone could provide some solid evidence of either. I would suggest a rewrite of this and remove references to other OS's in this respect.

Candy 11:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is a true statement, if misleading. Of course, some part of the reason that Windows is popular is that you don't have to enter your password to install new software. It seems to me that a major reason that there are so many security holes in Windows is that Microsoft doesn't want to make things difficult or confusing for the user. Branciforte3241 05:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unsubstantiated?

"Microsoft Windows is installed on the vast majority of personal computers. A July 2005 poll of Network Computing magazine readers found that 90% of their organizations used Microsoft's desktop operating systems.[2]"

I followed the link to the reference. I could not see any evidence of the claim that the poll showed 90% of the organisations used Microsoft's desktop Operating systems. Perhaps someone could point a beacon at this for me as I can't find it.

Candy 11:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

It appears to be there, although it appears to be 87%.... RN 17:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah! I follow. I really didn't see that. However, now it makes the statement in the article a little ambiguous. (I'm not referring to quibbling over the 87% or 90% but that needs changing obviously.) The statement is, "A July 2005 poll of Network Computing magazine readers found that 90% of their organizations used Microsoft's desktop operating systems.[2] ".

The way it is phrased with the mention of market penetration in the next sentence implies to me that MS Windows had an 87/90% installed user base. This is not a valid inferrence. In fact the answer simply states that 87% of companies have MS Windows installed on DeskTops. Not that they have it exclusively installed. Nor does it give any indication of how many copies of Windows are installed in those companies.

To me it is a misleading figure used in a misleading way. Needs striking, rephrasing or a better, less ambiguous source finding.

Candy 09:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

The following paragraph is so misleading it's a joke: "Finally, the large base of software available exclusively for the Windows family of operating systems has become the single largest self-perpetuating reason for the popularity of Windows. In recent years, many companies have been started with the sole intention of releasing Windows software; the fact that there is already a large customer base in place is reason enough for such companies to spend their resources solely on Windows software development. As a result, the fact that many companies are supporting Windows exclusively is a self-reinforcing reason for customers to choose Windows." My attempt to correct it was apparently deemed an "expiriment" and therefore reverted. If the paragraph is not going to be rewritten, it should at least include a statement of the fact that there is no software (that I am familiar of, at least, and therefore probably very little at the most) that is proprietary and released as Windows-only binaries that implements functionality that can not be found in an open source product. Though I wouldn't recommend stating this in the article, it being about Microsoft Windows, you can look to the FreeBSD Ports collection for an example. There is no large base of *functionality* available exclusively for Windows.

This whole article is pretty sad as far as representing unbent truth goes. I guess I didn't see the sign that said it's supposed to be a Microsoft advertisement before I started trying to clean it up some.

I changed the part on security to "Due in some part to the widespread usage of Windows on personal computers as well as a number of technical reasons there is a five fold greater amount of malware for Windows than other operating systems such as Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD[4]. "

I read the reference cited and the original text simply seemed to draw erroneous conclusions from the artcile. Now, I am still not fully happy with it. Perhaps the part about "widespread use" needs erasing or rephrasing. However, by this edit I want to bring in all the reasons for Window's security issues and the order of magnitude of differences between Windows and other OS's. I did stretch it by retaining part of the original which also referred to Linux, Unix and Free BSD as the article was only OS X vs Windows.

Also, I added "some" to the part of widespread usage although I would like it removed entirely. Part itself is rather vague as it could refer to large part or small part. By adding "some" I think I have implied it is a smaller part rather than larger.

Overall I may come back and do a clearer rephrasing of the section.

Candy 10:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NT genesis?

The article claims that Windows NT is based on OS/2 technology. This is not my understanding. I thought that Microsoft, aparently unable to do the job itself, hired David Cutler away from Digital Electronics corporation, where he worked in the VMS kernel security group. From what I've seen of the NT intenals, they bear a remarkable similarity to the VMS kernel. I'm thinking of stuff like IRPs and queued I/O and memory management. In fact, the initials WinNT (WNT) are one more (++) than VMS. This was Cutler's inside joke and also a subtle reference to the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" in which the ship's computer "HAL" is one less than "IBM". What say you all? Branciforte3241 06:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please explain!!!

In the section "Hybrid 16/32-bit operating systems" it can be read that "MS-DOS was now bundled with Windows; this notably made it (partially) aware of long file names when its utilities were run from within Windows, but angered the competition." I don't understand why the competition was so angered. Couldn't this paragraph be reworded by somebody? MJGR 08:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Little X Redirect

Why does "Little X" redirect here? "Little X" is the name of a popular music video director.

--Jeyler 04:43, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why no Criticism Section?

Microsoft Windows certainly has a lot of criticism on its plate...--Dlevenstein 00:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Given the vastness of what Windows has been over the last 20+ years, it's hard to write relevant criticism that covers the entire product line, past and present. The Windows XP article covers criticism of that version, and Windows Vista has some, too. -/- Warren 00:35, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

This is the third time in about to days that I've seen the question "Why no criticism section?" asked. I think it's much more important that articles are neutral and balanced as a whole than that every article has it's own obligatory criticism section. Note also that the name "criticism" is not very useful as a section title. Instead a name addressing the specific problem is usually better, or perhaps moving the criticism to the appropriate sections. Articles that consist mostly of a "praise" section and a "criticism" section would be an eyesore, wouldn't they? Shinobu 06:01, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

It's an enormous undertaking to make critisisms of Windows becasue it covers so many facets and would only be relevant within specific topics. For instance, if there was a section of Windows Marketing which included the hype, adverts etc then it could easily cover some of the Windows Vapourware as well. However, on its own it would make no sense without a context.

There is a lot to critisise imho but it has to be 1. Appropriately referenced and 2. in the correct context.

Candy 10:53, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

In my experience, criticism sections usually become nothing but a gigantic furball of revert wars and NPOV disputes. No thanks. Jtrainor 21:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

And thus the great failings of wikipedia becomes apparent. Unable to address valid criticism in an informative manner, wikipedia becomes nothing more than a platform for propagandic dross. Nodekeeper 10:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Huh? Wikipedia has an entire category devoted to criticism and controversies related to Microsoft; some of the articles in there are actually quite good and have high informative value. -/- Warren 10:21, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inclusion of Windows 9x as OS type

Windows 9x is an MS-DOS-based system, making its inclusion in the OS type almost redudant. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dustin gayler (talk • contribs) .

No it's not. Windows 9x uses MS-DOS as a bootloader and that's it. Once the operating system is up and running, there are no components of DOS running "underneath". We use "MS-DOS based" to refer to Windows 1.x thru 3.x. -/- Warren 21:33, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] new article: Comparison of Windows versions?

I think this article is big/good enough to inlcude at least a section comparing the differences of windows versions, as one might see in Comparison of operating systems, tables could be added to quickly show the differences of Windows 3.11 versus Windows 95 versus Windows 98 etc etc etc. At the least, such a table should be listed on this page, but I really think an article of this magnitude deserves its own page. After all, Linux has its own such page (Comparison of Linux distributions).

Dustin 19:44, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Windows and OS/2 relations.

Microsoft has 'legally' stolen some of OS/2 core GUI technologies. Microsoft also wrote some of the parts for OS/2 Warp versions. Also WindowsNT is based on OS/2 sources which where improved by VMS developers. Why is it that there ain't no where mentioned how did the Windows development star at all? Is it that confusing to put into words on a neutral manner? I think that History of Windows is not complete without mentioning OS/2 somewhere since it's role critical in developent history.

-AnXa- (I don't have account since I just randomly borrow english wiki in purpose of making finish wiki better. ;D)

I would agree. Microsoft might have never come out with Windows 95 when they did without pressure from IBM and OS/2. I'll have to dig out my copy of The Road Ahead, seems like even Gates might write about that relationship. --Charles Gaudette 19:12, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure what these "OS/2 core GUI" technologies would be, given that OS/2 GUI code evolved from Windows 1.0 source code, making incompatible changes to it, which Microsoft did not decide to adopt for Windows. One "GUI non-core" contribution of IBM was the visual appearance of Windows 2.x and Windows 3.0; this is already acked in some article; I am not sure people care.

NT kernel is not based on OS/2 sources, it is a new design, which was just called "NT OS/2" originally (cf. the dozens of makefiles in the leaked Windows 2000 source code) and was only supposed to have an OS/2 personality atop.

If one looks for "OS/2" strings in this leaked code, one can see that some minor stuff was indeed shared: Reversi, Clock, Cardfile could at some point be compiled for both systems, but even there the copyrights says "Microsoft OS/2" and not "IBM OS/2" (and the OS/2-specific C code has been removed, too bad). Otherwise, OS/2 is just another OS with which NT kernel tries to cope in some aspects (OS/2 boot manager is mentioned in a few places). And the OS/2 1.x subsystem code in NT is copyrighted by Microsoft.

Anyway, Microsoft also did most of OS/2 1.x and much of 2.0 kernel. Look at how OS/2 16-bit executable files have the same format as Windows 16-bit executable files, while OS/2 32-bit executables have the format of Windows 3.0 VXDs. The header files defining these formats contain only Microsoft copyrights; accordingly, the Microsoft guy who designed 32-bit formats was Wieslaw Kalkus in 1988, while the guy who did the 16-bit formats was Pete Stewart in 1984 (not the musician :-)). OS/2 HPFS filesystem was created by a Microsoft guy, Gordon Letwin, who also wrote Inside OS/2.

Of course, there is some IBM-copyrighted code in NT kernel sources, but this is FPU emulation, the PowerPC port involving Rick Simpson, Lou Perazzoli, Chuck Bauman, etc. and some BSP-level power-management stuff.

So no, NT does not owe much to OS/2 except a learning experience about how not to write stuff. However, NT does owe a lot to VMS and the Windows GUI API owes a lot to Macintosh. Maybe you remember how Windows 1.x and 2.x programming manuals from Microsoft had a chapter near the end about converting Mac apps to Windows apps without much thinking. Adam Mirowski 00:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arstechnica / sophos reference.

Since this has now been reverted and re-added a few times, it's probably worth discussing here. Neither sophos or arstechnica are by any means unknown. Sophos are a large, and well-respected antivirus company. Discuss.. njan 20:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Sophos are one of the 'top few' anti-virus companies - with millions of customers around the world - it has a alexa rank of 13,260 [1] which indicates it is a well known company and finally has millions of google hits.

And arstechnica are a very popular, well known and respected technology website that meets our verifiability policy and our reliable sources guideline. It has many, many hits in google and is ranked 1200th most popular website by Alexa.[2].-Localzuk^(talk) 21:21, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's Windows Programmed in?

While this may sound simple, I've never seen any where a detail listing of what windows (XP )is progammed in. Common sense logic says its likely written in C or C++ ? Can someone shed more light on this.

Both. Most of the kernel, core, drives, is C. Higher level stuff (shell, iexplore, etc) is C++. Other languages are in there too. SchmuckyTheCat 16:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this still is the case, but there were even bits of JavaScript (and man, what rotten code that was...) Shinobu 15:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Common Sidebar for Windows articles

I started work on a template which could be used in a bunch of windows-related articles. Please take a look at it. I'm interested in any suggestions and if you think it would be a good idea to include this as a right-side sidebar. --Dgies 07:20, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consideration for replacement of logo on header

Microsoft recently put up a new image for the "generic" Windows logo. Can that be replaced by the one currently in this article? http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/gallery/logos/web/Windows_generic_h_web.jpg --72.144.35.88 02:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] windows

pourquoi tu as changé de logo windows ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.199.203.8 (talk • contribs) .

"Why have you changed the Windows logo?"

There is a small amount of dissent over whether to use Vista or Windows XP screen-shots and logos. At the moment, I believe policy is to use the Windows XP versions. Once Vista is officially released, it should change to using all Vista versions. On another note, please use English on the English Wikipedia. There is a French Wikipedia available. tepid 02:11, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] possible article error

I am pretty sure that the picture subtitle or whatever you call it is wrong. It says "A typical windows vista desktop" but as far as i can remember, it only looks like that in aero mode.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.168.117.118 (talk • contribs) .

Aero is the default style for windows vista so it is typical to display that mode.-Localzuk^(talk) 15:03, 19 November 2006 (UTC)