Windows

[Zipporah Schumaker]

Windows is a series of operating systems developed by Microsoft. Each version of Windows includes a graphical user interface, with a desktop that allows users to view files and folders in windows. For the past two decades, Windows has been the most widely used operating system for personal computers PCs.
Microsoft Windows is designed for both home computing and professional purposes. Past versions of Windows home editions include Windows 3.0 (1990), Windows 3.1 (1992), Windows 95 (1995), Windows 98 (1998), Windows Me (2000), Windows XP (2001), and Windows Vista (2006). The current version, Windows 7, was released in 2009.
The first business-oriented version of Windows, called Windows NT 3.1, was in 1993. This was followed by Windows 3.5, 4.0, and Windows 2000. When Microsoft released Windows XP in 2001, the company simply created different editions of the operating system for personal and business purposes. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have followed the same release strategy.
Windows is designed to run on standard x86 hardware, such as Intel and AMD processors. Therefore, it can be installed on multiple brands of hardware, such as Dell, HP, and Sony computers, as well as home-built PCs. Windows 7 also includes several touchscreen features, that allow the operating system to run on certain tablets and computers with touchscreen displays. Microsofts mobile operating system, Windows Phone, is designed specifically for smartphones and runs on several brands of phones, including HTC, Nokia, and Samsung.

[Sarah]

A piece of glass you can open when it gets too hot outside. Come on people

[Britney]

A lot harder to open than its glass counterpart.
Windows, which was copied, edited, then sold for billions by Bill Gates(see [antichrist] ), is just as good as Linux or Mac OS X, without the whole Working and running thing. To sum it up: The worst mistake of your life would be to buy it.

[Lanell]

One of several pieces of software from Microsoft:

Windows 1.0 was a graphical shell that allowed the user of an IBM PC to have several MS-DOS programs running at the same time, sharing the screen through viewports called windows, hence the name. It was released after the first Apple Macintosh computer, and most users did not install it because it required too much memory. MS-DOS was an operating system that could only have one application open at any given time, and those applications could only access up to 640 kilobytes of RAM. Files stored by it had names consisting of eight characters, a dot, and three more characters, and certain characters, such as spaces, were not allowed. TEXTFILE.TXT was a typical DOS filename.

~ 3.0 was a graphical shell that also had dynamic library support, a feature normally built into an operating system. Applications had to be written for ~, almost as if it was an operating system. It did things on behalf of applications, like an operating system. It was started from DOS as an application, and exiting ~ returned the user to DOS. Instead of folders, there were program groups, where programs had to be explicitly placed. Placement of a program in the Program Groups typically involved telling ~ the complete path to the program executable (ie, C:\COREL\WP.EXE)

~ 95 was a graphical shell that was booted directly by DOS, so that it appeared to be the entire operating system. It imitated the look and feel of a Macintosh. It was capable of running most ~ NT binaries, and it implemented pre-emptive multitasking, a feature commonly found in operating systems, and added support for long filenames (LFN), which allowed files to have Macintosh-like names. The Restart in DOS mode feature is equivalent to the Exit Windows feature in older versions of ~.

Windows NT (New Technology) is a real operating system that was written completely independantly of the line of graphical shells that are also called Windows. Microsoft hired the employees of DEC that designed [VMS] to work on ~ NT. Unlike ~ versions that were already on the market, ~ NT took full advantage of the Intel 386s 32-bit capabilities. Its design was so closely tied to the Intel 32-bit architecture that it could not be ported to a 64-bit platform easily.

The New technology in ~ was new only to Windows. Features new to NT, such as true multitasking and virtual memory, had been available in other operating systems since the 1970s and even before that.
Microsoft eventually began to market Windows NT as an alternative to [UNIX], but they did so at the same time that [Linux] was becoming ever more popular as a UNIX replacement. Windows NT had many bugs of its own, and its superficial similarities to Windows 95 caused users to expect Windows 95 bugs to be present in Windows NT. Its Internet server offerings were notably inferior to the UNIX programs they were meant to replace.
All current versions of Windows are descended from Windows NT, and not from the DOS shells that were also called Windows.
Though 64-bit Intel processors are already available in 2004, a 64-bit version of Windows is still years away.

[Monty]

An operating system programmed by monkeys in a room with typewriters.

[Donald Trump]

The operating system that crashes every time you use it. Causes [blue screen of death] phenomenons.

[Agnes]

A definition on Urban Dictionary used by minority Apple fans to whine about Windows because theres not much else to do on a mac.

[Sommer]

The fanciest version of Solitaire Ive ever played.

[Donald Trump]

Air condtioning is like computers, as soon as you open windows it stops working.

[Vania]

Holes put in walls of buildings, often rectangular or square, which contain glass. They are there to both let in light and provide a [nice view] of the outside world.

The most popular Computer Operating System today, invented by Microsoft Corporation. It has good ease of use and a wide range of commercial software available.

Many computer experts (nerds) say that Windows is bloated, unstable, insecure and requires users to upgrade too often. However, Windows is a perfectly fine Desktop OS for non, semi computer literate people and gamers, provided they can install a [firewall], virus [scanner] and spyware remover.
However, for people more experienced with computers or for business applications, other Operating Systems such as Linux or *[BSD] are faster, more stable and secure, cheaper (erm, free) and more customisable than Windows.
Unfortunately, most of these OSes are harder to use and cannot run Windows software, although there are good free alternatives to Windows software for OSes like Linux such as [Open Office] for MS Office and [Mozilla] for IE.

[Michiko]

[Things] you [look out] of.