Microsoft Windows first announced Nov 10, 1983

It was November 10th, 1983 that Microsoft first announced Microsoft Windows, a graphical environment for IBM PC and compatible computers. It arrived late and without all of the promised features, so it was very much like future Windows versions like Windows Vista and Windows 8 in that regard.

Arriving predictably late, Microsoft-style

It’s easy to find people who say that Windows wasn’t a thing until the late 1980s or early 1990s. It’s true that it wasn’t a popular thing until Windows 3.0 came out in 1990. But Windows existed starting in late 1985. Microsoft and Tandy even jointly promoted it, with both companies pushing the Tandy 2000 as the best PC on the market to run Windows. 1.0. Bill Gates stepped in as Tandy’s pitchman, saying when he wanted to demonstrate Windows at its best, he demonstrated it on the Tandy 2000.

But that later became a problem. Tandy released the Tandy 2000 in 1983, but by the time Windows finally shipped November 20, 1985, IBM had released something faster and better suited for it. If you’ve seen the notorious fuzzy video clip of Steve Ballmer energetically pitching Microsoft Windows, looking and acting like a combination of Billy Mays and a sleazy 1980s used car salesman, you’ll notice Ballmer isn’t standing next to a Tandy computer. That’s an IBM PC/AT Model 5170 next to him. While the Tandy 2000 languished, Tandy sold millions of less powerful but much more affordable Tandy 1000 PCs. Critics told you that if you were going to run Windows, you needed a 286-based PC of some fashion.

The PC wasn’t ready for Windows yet when it was announced

Admittedly, part of the problem was the PC platform wasn’t really ready for Microsoft Windows until the late 1980s. The limited 640×200 resolution of CGA didn’t lend itself well to Windows, and even EGA’s highest resolution of 640×350 was a bit crowded. And Windows didn’t run all that well on a mainstream 286 processor. It really ran best on at least a 16 MHz 386 processor. Windows 1.0 did manage to sell half a million copies by 1987, but that didn’t mean the people who bought it used it much. Initially it was useful as a task switcher for switching between DOS apps, but if you wanted to do that, Quarterdeck’s DESQview was better.

So the perfect storm for Windows was really the middle of 1990. By that point, a 16 MHz 386SX PC with around 2 MB of RAM and a VGA display was reasonably affordable, costing between $1,500 and $2,000 depending on its configuration. Although modest by today’s standards, that was enough power to run early versions of Windows reasonably smoothly.

The first version of Excel for Windows arrived in 1987. A version of Word for Windows followed in 1989. And in 1990, Windows 3.0 arrived. Having native versions of Word and Excel proved crucial. It meant there was useful software available that took advantage of the graphical user interface, rather than just using it as a task switcher for DOS applications. Demand for lower-power PCs tapered off in the second half of the year.

It takes years to become an overnight sensation

At this point Microsoft Windows wasn’t a full operating system. It was a user environment that ran on top of MS-DOS, with MS-DOS handling the low-level I/O, especially anything related to disk access. It wasn’t until Windows NT that the low-level operating system and the user environment were merged into a cohesive and stable single entity. This was also due largely to overhead. Bolting a graphical environment onto MS-DOS resulted in something that could run on a $1,700 PC. Windows NT couldn’t have run on that platform in 1990, if it had existed yet.

There is a saying that it takes a long time to become an overnight sensation. Microsoft Windows is definitely a good example of that. It took almost 7 years in Windows’s case.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.