1987
Windows 2.0
In December of ’87 Microsoft released Windows 2.0. While Windows 1.0 had been out for a while, it was wasn’t a complete system but an extension of MS-DOS and was rated so bad by PC and Byte magazines that I never ran it. Windows 2.0, was a significant improvement, using expanded memory and had overlapping windows which sparked a long lawsuit with Apple over windows copyrights.
Memory was always a problem with early PC systems, initially based on the 8086 which had a 1 MB memory limit, MS DOS could initially only use the lower 640K of memory, considered a lot at the time, after all, what program could possible use 640K. Well many programs as it turned out. Changes with DOS 5.0 allowed programs to use memory above the 640K, known as the Upper Memory Area (UMA), to the full 1 MB but programs had to be specially coded to use it. With the introduction of the 80286 processor in 1985, the 80386 in 1986, which were used in later PCs, memory could expand well above the 1MB of memory with the additional memory being called Extended Memory. Use of Extended Memory was a great step forward for Windows 2.0 although it was still limited in use.
Updated: 09-02-2023