Microsoft Windows 1.0 Six-Page Advertising Insert In Byte Magazine, January 1986 (3 of 4)

            The day before last, I uploaded a picture of the Blue Screen of Death, which is a screen that is all too familiar to users of the Microsoft Windows Operating System. I mentioned in my narrative that the 25th anniversary of Windows will be observed later this year. Which got me to thinking about Windows 1.0.

I made a visit to my basement archives looking for examples of some of the early advertising Microsoft did for Windows. What I found was a six-page, glossy advertisement for Windows that appeared in the January, 1986 issue of Byte Magazine which, at that time, was the pre-eminent microcomputer publication. 

Microsoft was a heavy advertiser in Byte, and this is the first Windows advertisement to appear in that magazine. I don't know whether this is the very first Microsoft Windows advertisement, but it is certainly one of the first. I've left the images full size so all six pages can be clear read when enlarged to full size. 

The release of Microsoft Windows 1.0 did not receive the kind of attention associated with later Window's releases. I haven't found any flashy cover stories in the PC rags that immediately followed the release of Windows 1.0 in November, 1985. With the exception of Mac users, not everyone was sold yet on the benefits of a graphical user interface. And, on the Windows side of things, there weren't any killer apps. Actually, there were barely any Window's application other than those included by Microsoft with the installation disks (it came on floppy's). 

The other thing to keep in mind is that the early versions of Windows were really nothing more than a graphical shell on top of the MS-DOS operating system. Look at the screen shots and you can see how primitive it all looked, especially when compared to the Macintosh which had nearly a two year head start. The windows could only be tiled against one another. There was no overlapping at all, and multitasking was available but limited.

I hope you enjoy this trip down old technology memory lane.

For more photographs of vintage technology from the early years of personal computing, visit my "Personal Computing in the 1970s & 80s" (Set).

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Taken on: February 11, 2010

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Sets appears in: • Personal Computing in the 1970s & 80s

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