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• Posted July 27, 2013, 9 a.m. - 11 years, 5 months ago

10 Years today since the release of Windows NT

 

 

On 27^th July 1993 Microsoft unveiled their brand new operating system, WindowsNT. This was the most advanced and powerful operating system which had ever been released. WindowsNT shared some similarities to UNIX. UNIX was another operating system which was first developed in the late 60s, it showed a lot of potential and was very advanced for its time.

 

It is believed that the idea for the name “NT” was taken from an early Intel processor, the Intel i860 which was code-named “N-Ten”. For marketing purposes Microsoft expanded the NT name to “New Technology”, but never carried it further to have any particular meaning, but still regard new systems to have been “Built on NT Technology”.

 

WindowsNT was a significant improvement to the previous version that was MS-DOS based, as this was the first fully 32-bit version of Windows, meaning that this was a much more powerful system as for the earlier versions only being able to process 16-bit.

 

WindowsNT was a huge stepping stone for Microsoft because this was the first of the operating systems for what all of the systems after were based on.

 

Almost exactly 3 years after the initial release of WindowsNT, NT 4.0 was released on July 29^th 1996, introducing Windows Explorer which included the Taskbar and Start Menu that featured on Windows 95, 98 and 2000.

 

Windows 2000 experienced a lot of problems and also the “millennium bug” that caused many faults with the operating system, Microsoft worked on the problem quickly and just a year later they resolved all the issues and in October 2001 Microsoft released Windows XP, which is considered the best operating system Microsoft have done, even as today with Windows 7 and 8 out. XP is still used by a minority today mostly by choice.

 

Windows has come a long way since the first initial NT release, with the greatly powerful Windows 7 and 8 used by millions around the world with its option to upgrade to its powerful 64-bit versions which opens up a nearly infinite amount of opportunities, through hardware upgrades to extending software to endless capabilities to which we have yet to experience. With the release of 64-bit is only a matter of time before some brilliant mind is able to fully optimise this system to extraordinary levels of achievements. Windows 7 and 8 are only a very small percentage of what to expect out of 64-bit operating systems.

 

Here is a table showing how Windows has developed over the years in RAM capabilities and how 32-bit has reached the limit of what can be achieved, 64-bit showing how it’s improved and still has so much more to come:

 

Operating System	RAM limit 32-bit	RAM limit 64-Bit
First Windows NT to 4.1 release	64 MB	–
Windows XP	4 GB	128 GB
Windows Vista	4 GB	128 GB
Windows 7	4 GB	192 GB
Windows 8	4 GB	512 GB

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Windows_logo_and_wordmark_-_2012.svg

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