It’s been a long time coming. Microsoft hasn’t released a new consumer operating system since Windows XP came out in October, 2001. Now, nearly six years later, Windows has once again been polished, modernized and buffed to a glossy sheen for a newer consumer era. Windows Vista is here.
Windows XP was a big deal for the Windows family. Although Microsoft continued to release consumer operating systems built upon the Windows 95 kernel (including Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me), it targeted only businesses and power users with its NT kernel offerings such as Windows NT and Windows 2000.
There was a difference. For backward compatibility to the days of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 computing, Microsoft stuck with the 9x kernel for consumers. That kernel was an intricate meshwork of 16-bit (DOS) and 32-bit (NT) code that never truly abandoned the DOS conventions and never fully took advantage of the pure 32-bit power. The NT kernel, however, was built to be a 32-bit monster from the start, without the ambition to run 16-bit Windows 3.1 software or the thousands of games released for DOS. In 2001, Windows XP brought the parallel lines of Windows business and consumer operating systems together at last. With its Compatibility Modes, it was able to run some DOS and Windows 3.1 software, but because the computing world had started its move to 32-bit in 1995, there wasn’t as much demand for backward compatibility. Windows XP proved to be far more stable than any of the 9x flavors (especially the justifiably hated Windows Me), and it was multimedia-friendly and an excellent platform for gaming.
And aren’t multimedia and gaming what computers are all about?
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