Windows 2.0 is a major release of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, a family of graphical

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s for

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. It was

released to manufacturing The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

on December 9, 1987, as a successor to Windows 1.0. The product includes two different variants: a base edition for 8086

real mode Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of all x86-compatible CPUs. The mode gets its name from the fact that addresses in real mode always correspond to real locations in memory. Real mode is characterized by a 20- bit s ...

, and Windows/386, an enhanced edition for

i386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 archite ...

protected mode In computing, protected mode, also called protected virtual address mode, is an operational mode of x86-compatible central processing units (CPUs). It allows system software to use features such as Memory_segmentation, segmentation, virtual mem ...

. Windows 2.0 differs from its predecessor by allowing users to overlap and resize application windows, while the

operating environment In computer software, an operating environment or integrated applications environment is the environment in which users run application software. The environment consists of a user interface provided by an applications manager and usually an ap ...

also introduced

desktop icons In computing, an icon is a pictogram or ideogram displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate a computer system. It can serve as an electronic hyperlink or file shortcut to access the program or data. The user can activate an ...

keyboard shortcut In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...

s, and support for 16-color VGA graphics. It also introduced

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...

and Excel. Noted as an improvement of its predecessor, Microsoft Windows gained more sales and popularity after the release of the operating environment, although it is also considered to be the incarnation that remained a

work in progress Work in process or work-in-process, (WIP), work in progress (WIP), goods in process, or in-process inventory refers to a company's partially finished goods waiting for completion and eventual sale, or the value of these items. The term is used in ...

. Due to the introduction of overlapping windows,

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

had filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in March 1988 after accusing them of violating copyrights Apple held; in the end, however, the judge ruled in favor of Microsoft. The operating environment was succeeded by Windows 2.1 in May 1988, while Microsoft ended its support on December 31, 2001.

Release versions

The

came in two different variants with different names and CPU support. The basic edition supported the

virtual 8086 mode In the 80386 microprocessor and later, virtual 8086 mode (also called virtual real mode, V86-mode, or VM86) allows the execution of real mode applications that are incapable of running directly in protected mode while the processor is running ...

of the

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architect ...

microprocessor. Despite its configuration, the variant was fully operational on an

8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers ...

8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allo ...

processor, although the

high memory area In DOS memory management, the high memory area (HMA) is the RAM area consisting of the first 65520 bytes above the one megabyte in an IBM AT or compatible computer. In real mode, the segmentation architecture of the Intel 8086 and subseque ...

would not be available on an 8086-class processor; however,

expanded memory In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory (640 KiB). ''Expanded memory'' is an umbrella term for several incompatible tech ...

could still be used.

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

's PS/2 Model 25, which had an option to ship with a "DOS 4.00 and Windows kit" for educational markets, shipped Windows with 8086 hardware. The basic edition would be later renamed to ''Windows/286'' with the release of Windows 2.1 in 1988. The other variant, named ''Windows/386'', was available as early as September 1987, pre-dating the release of Windows 2.0 in December 1987. It was much more advanced than its other sibling. It introduced a

kernel, above which the GUI and applications run as a virtual 8086 mode task. The variant had fully

preemptive multitasking In computing, preemption is the act performed by an external scheduler — without assistance or cooperation from the task — of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming it at a later time. This preemptive sc ...

, and allowed several

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

programs to run in parallel in "virtual 8086" CPU mode, rather than always suspending background applications. With the exception of a few kilobytes of overhead, each DOS application could use any available low memory before Windows was started. Windows/386 also provided EMS emulation, using the memory management features of the i386 to make RAM beyond 640k behave like the banked memory previously only supplied by add-in cards and used by popular DOS applications. There was no support for disk-based

virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a ver ...

, so multiple DOS programs had to fit inside the available physical memory. Users could run more applications on the 386 version. Neither of these versions worked with DOS memory managers like CEMM or QEMM or with

DOS extender A DOS extender is a computer software program running under DOS that enables software to run in a protected mode environment even though the host operating system is only capable of operating in real mode. DOS extenders were initially developed ...

s, which have their own extended memory management and run in protected mode as well. This was remedied in version 3.0, which is compatible with

Virtual Control Program Interface In computing, the Virtual Control Program Interface (VCPI) is a specification published in 1989 by Phar Lap Software that allows a DOS program to run in protected mode, granting access to many features of the processor not available in real mod ...

(VCPI) in "standard mode" and with

DOS Protected Mode Interface In computing, the DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) is a specification introduced in 1989 which allows a DOS program to run in protected mode, giving access to many features of the new PC processors of the time not available in real mode. It w ...

(DPMI) in "386 enhanced" mode. Microsoft ended its support for Windows 2.0 on December 31, 2001.

Features

Unlike its predecessor, Windows 2.0 allows the user to overlap and resize application windows. It included

s, and the terminology "minimize" and "maximize", as opposed to "iconize" and "zoom" which was used in Windows 1.0. Support for 16-color VGA graphics, EMS memory, and new capabilities of the i386 CPU in some versions were also added. Windows 2.0 is the last version of Windows that ran solely on

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

s. The operating environment is shipped with fifteen programs, and it also introduced the GUI based programs

and Excel, to compete against the then-reigning competitors

WordPerfect WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...

and

Lotus 1-2-3 Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software (later part of IBM). It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles ...

. Software such as the Aldus Pagemaker and

CorelDRAW CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Alludo (formerly Corel Corporation). It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related progr ...

were also developed for Windows 2.0. The Windows API functions are largely handled by KERNEL.EXE, USER.EXE, and GDI.EXE. These files along with device drivers, printer drivers being the exception, are combined by the Windows setup program into WIN200.BIN and WIN200.OVL. The system files WINOLDAP.MOD and WINOLDAP.GRB are used to run MS-DOS programs. IBM licensed Windows's GUI for OS/2 as

Presentation Manager Presentation Manager (PM) is the graphical user interface (GUI) that International Business Machines, IBM and Microsoft introduced in version 1.1 of their operating system OS/2 in late 1988. History Microsoft began developing a graphic user inter ...

, and the two companies stated that it and Windows 2.0 would be almost identical.

System requirements

The official system requirements for Windows 2.0 include the following. Windows 2.0 was dependent on the DOS system and

random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of Computer memory, electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows ...

was restricted to a maximum of 1 MB due to running in

Reception

Windows 2.0 is considered to be an incremental improvement of its predecessor, but still a

work in process Work in process or work-in-process, (WIP), work in progress (WIP), goods in process, or in-process inventory refers to a company's partially finished goods waiting for completion and eventual sale, or the value of these items. The term is used in ...

. Due to its improvements, Microsoft Windows gained more popularity after its release and its interface was considered to be easier to manage. Stewart Alsop II predicted in January 1988 that "Any transition to a graphical environment on IBM-style machines is bound to be maddeningly slow and driven strictly by market forces", because the GUI had "serious deficiencies" and users had to switch to DOS for many tasks. '' CNET'' considered that Windows 2.0 "wasn't much better than Windows 1.0". ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

'' magazine listed the variant as among the "distinction" winner of the BYTE Awards in 1989, describing it as a "serious competition for OS/2" as it "taps into the power of the 80386". The operating environment cost $99. Sales of Microsoft Windows reached one million in 1988, and by January 1990, it had reached less than two million, although Windows 2.0 was not widely used. It was succeeded by Windows 2.1, which was released in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

in May 1988.

Legal conflict with Apple

On March 17, 1988,

filed a lawsuit against

and

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

, accusing them of violating copyrights Apple held on the Macintosh System Software. Apple claimed the "

look and feel In software design, the look and feel of a graphical user interface comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces (the "look"), as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes ...

" of the Macintosh operating system, taken as a whole, was protected by

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

and that Windows 2.0 violated this copyright by having the same icons. The judge ruled in favor of Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft on all but 10 of the 189 graphical user interface elements on which Apple sued, and the court found the remaining 10 GUI elements could not be copyrighted.

References

External links

GUIdebook: Windows 2.0 Gallery
– A website dedicated to preserving and showcasing graphical user interfaces
Microsoft article with details about the different versions of Windows
{{Authority control 1987 software Products and services discontinued in 2001 2.0 History of Microsoft History of software DOS software Products introduced in 1987