Windows celebrates 27th birthday

Windows today celebrated its 27th birthday, with Forbes magazine creating a historic timeline to celebrate the event.

Documenting 27 facts spanning 27 years, the American publication "dug into the annals of history and assembled a collection of bits and bytes."

27 Facts for 27 Years:

1. More than 70.39% of Internet users are currently running Window, and there are 1,693,244,385 users.

2. Bill Gates started Microsoft with Paul Allen in Gates’ 500-square-foot garage in 1975 with a huge vision—a computer on every desktop and in every home.

3. Microsoft currently employs 88,180 people who work across 32,404,796 square feet of Microsoft’s premises.

4. Microsoft shipped out the first copy of Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985. Its TV commercial featured current CEO Steve Ballmer as an enthusiastic salesman.

5. Windows 1.0 only required a minimum of 256 kilobytes (KB), two double-sided floppy disk drives, and a graphics adapter card.

6. Control Panel made its first appearance in Windows 2.0.

7. Windows 3.0 had significantly better performance, including advanced graphics with 16 colors (16,777,216 colors in most screens today).

8. Windows NT was originally called “Portable Systems.”

9. Microsoft paid Brian Eno $35,000 to compose 3.25 seconds of music for the Windows 95 startup sound.

10. Windows 95 featured the first appearance of the Start menu, taskbar, and minimize, maximize, and close buttons on each window.

11. Windows 95, with built-in Internet support and dial-up networking, marked the coming of the Internet Age.

12. Windows 98 was the first Windows system that supported DVD discs and universal serial bus (USB) devices.

13. Windows 98 was the last version based on MS‑DOS.

14. Between the original launch of Windows and the release of Windows XP, about one billion PCs were shipped worldwide.

15. Windows XP was compiled from 45 million lines of code.

16. More than 1.5 million devices were compatible with Windows Vista at launch.

17. Vista had the longest startup/logon music ever.

18. Windows 7 is evaluated by 8 million beta testers worldwide before it’s released.

19. Windows sold 240 million in 2010 which means that Microsoft sold 657,534 Windows 7 copies per day, 27,397 copies per hour, and 7.6 copies each second.

20. 93% of all new computers from OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) ship with Windows 7 preinstalled.

21. The Windows 7 Start Menu was opened a total of 14,139,925,439 times in October of 2010

22. Windows 7 has largest users share among all other OS – 41.35%.

23. The consumer preview of Windows 8 was downloaded one million times in a single day.

24. Citizens from 70 different countries completed the download soon after the launch.

25. Windows 8 is available in 109 different languages.

26.Windows 8 works with files of up to 16 exbibytes, which equates to 687 million Blu-Rays.

27. Estimates suggest roughly 4.5 billion people will use Windows 8 in the future.

List compiled by Forbes magazine, to read the original article click here

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