Everybody is frantically updating to Windows 10 when it is available for free.
This week I was chatting with some students just finishing their IT training and being on a couple of months work term with us.
I was telling them about working with computers having only 64kb of memory. They couldn't believe that we could do anything with such dinosaurs even not running DOS but CP/M-86.
20 years ago, I used Windows 1.0

Then today, I searched Internet for Windows 1.0 and found a fully functional online emulator.
Guess what I will do on Monday?
I will run it on full screen on a couple of computers and tell people that I wanted to upgrade their system to Windows 10 but mistype 10 and got only Windows 1.0
I am already giggling about it!
Check this: Windows 1.0 fully working emulator
Load this on your work computer, put it on full screen and start notepad or something like this.
Then just loudly complain that your computer is a dinosaur and you could be more efficient if the company was investing more money in technology.

Thanks CF this is bringing  back some memories DR DOS being one.

I do recall as a field engineer formatting a customer's A: drive to discover it was not a floppy but a hard drive

Thanks for sharing.

My favourite one goes back to Windows 3.1. At shutdown, the final screen used to say 'You can shut down your computer now'. The file was called logo.sys; someone changed it so that it read 'You can shut down your computer now. If you don't this virus will'.

Another CP/M user here CF. I hated DOS when we were forced to move over to it. Why would I want to swap a good multi-user O/S to a single-user piece of crap? Needless to say, management won.

It's the unfortunate reality that marketing often wins out over quality. In addition to CP/M vs MS DOS and variations, the was also VHS vs Beta. 

My earliest microcomputer experience was Apple II+ with 16Kb of RAM, which we soon upgraded to a massive 48!!

My school then set up a room full of Microbees. 

My home computers were Macs, but ar work (next school) I was bilingual with Mac and PC. My earliest windows experience was with Win 3 and 3.1 apart from a brief interlude helping a friend with Win 2.0. 

One of my successes in teaching computing was to instil an appreciation of older technology, and having students compare an older system to what came before, rather than what came after. It made them much more appreciative of older technology, an less likely to take the current technology for granted. 
This even extended to typewriters, where I'd show them an old full size manual and an electric daisy wheel portable. They were amazed, and most more recent students had never seen one. 
I wish I still had my IBM golf ball to show them. 

Bill

1985.....

This is the year of Windows 1.0's release, the 300 bauds modems were a fast lightning way to communicate and Bulletin Board Services were our Internet. Pretty archaic technology... Right!

At the same time, BMW started to market the K100.
Now, you can understand why it was so much ahead of its time.

We are still riding the K100, but would we use a teletype or a 300 bauds modem to communicate with our friends?

Just sometime to think about.




Or adjust to one of the first GUI operating system?


Or the improved Windows 95


Most of us baby boomers had a very interesting life.
We still ride a K100 and at the same time still use batch files to work on Windows 10.
It was a very interesting ride.

Re: video above... The guy on the right looks like he just found out about the birds and the bees  

I stuck with my Win 3.0 and 3.1 right thru the 90s then hyperdrive straight to XP. Win 7 has been my favourite.

Had a Mac Classic for 5 years in the 80s. That cost me about AU$7,000 with an additional external floppy drive, Apple Writer (printer) and some office software. A lot of money in 1985.

Dateline: 1991
Panasonic thermal fax/telephone cost me AU$2,100

Again harking back to my teaching, students were amazed when I described an acoustic coupled modem to them - actually using sound to and from the telephone handset! They were gobsmacked. 

And the idea of only having 300 baud was equally amazing to them. Most of the current ones are too young to even remember dial-up.

Interesting to compare the operating systems. When I was in my previous school, my staff room had the most powerful Mac and most powerful PC in the school because I used them for school support purposes. I could do anything needed on either machine, being fully bilingual on them, but it was always easier to do on the Mac.

Bill