Cool, nice quick overview. I've used: Win 95 Win 98 SE Win 2000 (at school only) Win XP Win 7 (at work only) Win 8.1 I was quite satisfied with Win XP, but I do believe that on a technical level, Win 8.1 is better and more stable. I will most likely upgrade to Win 10 next year, but I'm not sure.
I've used Windows since 2. (Until Windows 3, I thought it was called "MS-DOS Executive" heh...only used v2 at work and not very much; at home it was DOS and DesQview). <--me, at Win8.x
I started on these systems: PC DOS 1-3, IBM DOS 4 -5, OS/2 1-2, OS/2 Warp 3-4 (Microsoft and IBM worked together on some of them). My first Windows based PC ran Windows 95. then 98, XP, Vista, and finally W7. Compared to IBM they produced very few operating systems., but then they had no appetite for mainframes. They did well building on IBM ideas and produced a better user experience in the end. Unexpected crashes and freeze ups were numerous in the beginning, but they have since produced a very fine product. W10 is the last Windows, they say.
Oh yeah! I forgot about OS/2...I ran that for a while (Warp)...was really nice...ran Windows better than Windows.
I forgot that I'm also using Win 7 at work, I've edited my post. I have read that OS/2 Warp could have been successful, but IBM made some wrong decisions.
My own perspective at the time was that IBM seen OS/2 Warp as a business platform and there was no need for all that frivolous , memory consuming fun stuff that Windows was producing on their platform. It turned out that users loved the little puppy (I think it was a puppy) that appeared when you did something wrong or you needed some assistance. IBM also prided themselves on having a mature multi-tasking platform that Windows did not see as being all that important in their fledgling releases but they did not market it as a really cool feature. They chose instead to build on their close business relationship they had with Fortune 500 companies to convince them that the integration of the hardware platform and the software platform had more merit. The other killer was that MS marketed to all levels of government in a big way, especially schools (Apple later did the same and pushed MS out of the sector ... and also got themselves a lot of well trained Apple users). Where MS really hurt IBM was on the 'packaged PC platform' which IBM did not have. Windows came with their own integrated business applications, such as a Word and Excel and later Power Point. IBM tried to recapture their market with Lotus, but they were too late. So there were a lot of mistakes that IBM made.
Thanks for the summary, I never really read the full story, so it was interesting to me. Fascinating how bad business decisions can cost you quite badly. BTW, I remember that way back, I was a bit fascinated with BeOS, I liked the GUI. I never actually used it though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
Another issue for OS/2 was non-spec hardware causing problems in the OS, most notoriously non-bi-directional printer cables. @emmjay nailed it. For the home user, we got DOS compatiblity and DirectX...the latter being why I run Windows and not linux.
Looks like the author forgot about one released version of Windows--ME. Probably because most users also forgot about it..hahahaha. It was released in September 2000 between Windows 2000 and XP. And yes I did try it out, think I still have an install disk somewhere. It never found any footing as users either wanted to stay with 98 or jump right into XP. 2000 was always considered more of an office or business OS and most around my circle never ventured into it. Of course I did and found it very useful. Short stroll down history lane.....
BTW, I've just found an interesting article about BeOS, I didn't even know that it could have been the new Apple's OS. http://www.wired.com/2015/05/os-almost-made-apple-entirely-different-company/
This is another interesting article about the guy who invented the Start Menu and Task-bar. It's one of the reasons why I love Windows, a simple but indispensable feature. http://uk.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-windows-start-button-2015-7?r=US&IR=T
