Check Windows 10 System Requirements & Specs | Microsoft - Navigation menu

Looking for:

Windows 10 home high end devices free. Compare Windows 10 Home vs. Pro 

Click here to DOWNLOAD

   

 

Windows 10 - Wikipedia

 

Starting in the s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers. Charles Babbage , an English mechanical engineer and polymath , originated the concept of a programmable computer.

Considered the " father of the computer ", [17] he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his revolutionary difference engine , designed to aid in navigational calculations, in he realized that a much more general design, an Analytical Engine , was possible.

The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards , a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom.

For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit , control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops , and integrated memory , making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.

The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand — this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to political and financial difficulties as well as his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow.

Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage , completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit the mill in He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers , which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers.

The differential analyser , a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in by James Thomson , the elder brother of the more famous Sir William Thomson.

The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer , built by H. This built on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H.

A dozen of these devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the s, the success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the s in some specialized applications such as education slide rule and aircraft control systems. By , the United States Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer small enough to use aboard a submarine.

This was the Torpedo Data Computer , which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II similar devices were developed in other countries as well.

Early digital computers were electromechanical ; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform the calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes.

The Z2 , created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in , was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer. In , Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3 , the world's first working electromechanical programmable , fully automatic digital computer. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating-point numbers.

Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system used in Charles Babbage 's earlier design , using a binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. Zuse's next computer, the Z4 , became the world's first commercial computer; after initial delay due to the Second World War, it was completed in and delivered to the ETH Zurich.

Purely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents, at the same time that digital calculation replaced analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers , working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the telephone exchange.

Experimental equipment that he built in went into operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network into an electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes. The German encryption machine, Enigma , was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes which were often run by women.

Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer. It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Colossus Mark I contained 1, thermionic valves tubes , but Mark II with 2, valves, was both five times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process.

Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches. It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine.

It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words about 80 bytes. Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18, vacuum tubes, 1, relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. The principle of the modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal paper, [42] On Computable Numbers.

Turing proposed a simple device that he called "Universal Computing machine" and that is now known as a universal Turing machine. He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is computable by executing instructions program stored on tape, allowing the machine to be programmable. The fundamental concept of Turing's design is the stored program , where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory.

Von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper. Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores, modern computers are said to be Turing-complete , which is to say, they have algorithm execution capability equivalent to a universal Turing machine. Early computing machines had fixed programs.

Changing its function required the re-wiring and re-structuring of the machine. A stored-program computer includes by design an instruction set and can store in memory a set of instructions a program that details the computation. The theoretical basis for the stored-program computer was laid by Alan Turing in his paper.

In , Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory and began work on developing an electronic stored-program digital computer. His report "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the first specification for such a device. The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer. Grace Hopper was the first person to develop a compiler for programming language.

The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1 , the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between and , one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam. The LEO I computer became operational in April [49] and ran the world's first regular routine office computer job. The concept of a field-effect transistor was proposed by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in John Bardeen and Walter Brattain , while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs , built the first working transistor , the point-contact transistor , in , which was followed by Shockley's bipolar junction transistor in Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes, so give off less heat.

Junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum tubes and had longer, indefinite, service life. Transistorized computers could contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space. However, early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, which limited them to a number of specialised applications.

At the University of Manchester , a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves. However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory , so it was not the first completely transistorized computer.

Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in The next great advance in computing power came with the advent of the integrated circuit IC.

The idea of the integrated circuit was first conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence , Geoffrey W. Dummer presented the first public description of an integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D. Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby.

Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon , whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium. Noyce's monolithic IC was fabricated using the planar process , developed by his colleague Jean Hoerni in early In turn, the planar process was based on Mohamed M. Atalla's work on semiconductor surface passivation by silicon dioxide in the late s. The development of the MOS integrated circuit led to the invention of the microprocessor , [84] [85] and heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal use of computers.

While the subject of exactly which device was the first microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on the exact definition of the term "microprocessor", it is largely undisputed that the first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel , [86] designed and realized by Federico Faggin with his silicon-gate MOS IC technology, [84] along with Ted Hoff , Masatoshi Shima and Stanley Mazor at Intel. System on a Chip SoCs are complete computers on a microchip or chip the size of a coin.

If not integrated, the RAM is usually placed directly above known as Package on package or below on the opposite side of the circuit board the SoC, and the flash memory is usually placed right next to the SoC, this all done to improve data transfer speeds, as the data signals don't have to travel long distances. Since ENIAC in , computers have advanced enormously, with modern SoCs Such as the Snapdragon being the size of a coin while also being hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, integrating billions of transistors, and consuming only a few watts of power.

The first mobile computers were heavy and ran from mains power. The 50 lb 23 kg IBM was an early example. Later portables such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable were considerably lighter but still needed to be plugged in. The first laptops , such as the Grid Compass , removed this requirement by incorporating batteries — and with the continued miniaturization of computing resources and advancements in portable battery life, portable computers grew in popularity in the s.

These smartphones and tablets run on a variety of operating systems and recently became the dominant computing device on the market. The term hardware covers all of those parts of a computer that are tangible physical objects.

Circuits , computer chips, graphic cards, sound cards, memory RAM , motherboard, displays, power supplies, cables, keyboards, printers and "mice" input devices are all hardware. These parts are interconnected by buses , often made of groups of wires. Inside each of these parts are thousands to trillions of small electrical circuits which can be turned off or on by means of an electronic switch. Each circuit represents a bit binary digit of information so that when the circuit is on it represents a "1", and when off it represents a "0" in positive logic representation.

The circuits are arranged in logic gates so that one or more of the circuits may control the state of one or more of the other circuits. When unprocessed data is sent to the computer with the help of input devices, the data is processed and sent to output devices.

The input devices may be hand-operated or automated. The act of processing is mainly regulated by the CPU. Some examples of input devices are:. The means through which computer gives output are known as output devices. Some examples of output devices are:. The control unit often called a control system or central controller manages the computer's various components; it reads and interprets decodes the program instructions, transforming them into control signals that activate other parts of the computer.

A key component common to all CPUs is the program counter , a special memory cell a register that keeps track of which location in memory the next instruction is to be read from. The control system's function is as follows— this is a simplified description, and some of these steps may be performed concurrently or in a different order depending on the type of CPU:. Since the program counter is conceptually just another set of memory cells, it can be changed by calculations done in the ALU.

Adding to the program counter would cause the next instruction to be read from a place locations further down the program. Instructions that modify the program counter are often known as "jumps" and allow for loops instructions that are repeated by the computer and often conditional instruction execution both examples of control flow. The sequence of operations that the control unit goes through to process an instruction is in itself like a short computer program , and indeed, in some more complex CPU designs, there is another yet smaller computer called a microsequencer , which runs a microcode program that causes all of these events to happen.

Early CPUs were composed of many separate components. Since the s, CPUs have typically been constructed on a single MOS integrated circuit chip called a microprocessor.

The ALU is capable of performing two classes of operations: arithmetic and logic. Some can operate only on whole numbers integers while others use floating point to represent real numbers , albeit with limited precision. However, any computer that is capable of performing just the simplest operations can be programmed to break down the more complex operations into simple steps that it can perform. Therefore, any computer can be programmed to perform any arithmetic operation—although it will take more time to do so if its ALU does not directly support the operation.

An ALU may also compare numbers and return Boolean truth values true or false depending on whether one is equal to, greater than or less than the other "is 64 greater than 65? These can be useful for creating complicated conditional statements and processing Boolean logic. Superscalar computers may contain multiple ALUs, allowing them to process several instructions simultaneously. A computer's memory can be viewed as a list of cells into which numbers can be placed or read. Each cell has a numbered "address" and can store a single number.

The computer can be instructed to "put the number into the cell numbered " or to "add the number that is in cell to the number that is in cell and put the answer into cell Letters, numbers, even computer instructions can be placed into memory with equal ease.

Since the CPU does not differentiate between different types of information, it is the software's responsibility to give significance to what the memory sees as nothing but a series of numbers. In almost all modern computers, each memory cell is set up to store binary numbers in groups of eight bits called a byte. To store larger numbers, several consecutive bytes may be used typically, two, four or eight. When negative numbers are required, they are usually stored in two's complement notation.

Other arrangements are possible, but are usually not seen outside of specialized applications or historical contexts. A computer can store any kind of information in memory if it can be represented numerically. Modern computers have billions or even trillions of bytes of memory.

The CPU contains a special set of memory cells called registers that can be read and written to much more rapidly than the main memory area. There are typically between two and one hundred registers depending on the type of CPU. Registers are used for the most frequently needed data items to avoid having to access main memory every time data is needed.

As data is constantly being worked on, reducing the need to access main memory which is often slow compared to the ALU and control units greatly increases the computer's speed.

ROM is typically used to store the computer's initial start-up instructions. In general, the contents of RAM are erased when the power to the computer is turned off, but ROM retains its data indefinitely. In embedded computers , which frequently do not have disk drives, all of the required software may be stored in ROM. Software stored in ROM is often called firmware , because it is notionally more like hardware than software. Flash memory blurs the distinction between ROM and RAM, as it retains its data when turned off but is also rewritable.

It is typically much slower than conventional ROM and RAM however, so its use is restricted to applications where high speed is unnecessary. In more sophisticated computers there may be one or more RAM cache memories , which are slower than registers but faster than main memory. Generally computers with this sort of cache are designed to move frequently needed data into the cache automatically, often without the need for any intervention on the programmer's part.

Hard disk drives , floppy disk drives and optical disc drives serve as both input and output devices. A graphics processing unit might contain fifty or more tiny computers that perform the calculations necessary to display 3D graphics.

A era flat screen display contains its own computer circuitry. While a computer may be viewed as running one gigantic program stored in its main memory, in some systems it is necessary to give the appearance of running several programs simultaneously. This is achieved by multitasking i. By remembering where it was executing prior to the interrupt, the computer can return to that task later.

If several programs are running "at the same time". Since modern computers typically execute instructions several orders of magnitude faster than human perception, it may appear that many programs are running at the same time even though only one is ever executing in any given instant.

This method of multitasking is sometimes termed "time-sharing" since each program is allocated a "slice" of time in turn. Before the era of inexpensive computers, the principal use for multitasking was to allow many people to share the same computer.

If a program is waiting for the user to click on the mouse or press a key on the keyboard, then it will not take a "time slice" until the event it is waiting for has occurred. This frees up time for other programs to execute so that many programs may be run simultaneously without unacceptable speed loss.

Some computers are designed to distribute their work across several CPUs in a multiprocessing configuration, a technique once employed in only large and powerful machines such as supercomputers , mainframe computers and servers. Multiprocessor and multi-core multiple CPUs on a single integrated circuit personal and laptop computers are now widely available, and are being increasingly used in lower-end markets as a result.

Supercomputers in particular often have highly unique architectures that differ significantly from the basic stored-program architecture and from general-purpose computers. Such designs tend to be useful for only specialized tasks due to the large scale of program organization required to successfully utilize most of the available resources at once.

Supercomputers usually see usage in large-scale simulation , graphics rendering , and cryptography applications, as well as with other so-called " embarrassingly parallel " tasks.

Software refers to parts of the computer which do not have a material form, such as programs, data, protocols, etc. Software is that part of a computer system that consists of encoded information or computer instructions, in contrast to the physical hardware from which the system is built. Computer software includes computer programs , libraries and related non-executable data , such as online documentation or digital media.

It is often divided into system software and application software Computer hardware and software require each other and neither can be realistically used on its own. There are thousands of different programming languages—some intended for general purpose, others useful for only highly specialized applications. The defining feature of modern computers which distinguishes them from all other machines is that they can be programmed.

That is to say that some type of instructions the program can be given to the computer, and it will process them. Modern computers based on the von Neumann architecture often have machine code in the form of an imperative programming language. In practical terms, a computer program may be just a few instructions or extend to many millions of instructions, as do the programs for word processors and web browsers for example.

A typical modern computer can execute billions of instructions per second gigaflops and rarely makes a mistake over many years of operation. Large computer programs consisting of several million instructions may take teams of programmers years to write, and due to the complexity of the task almost certainly contain errors.

This section applies to most common RAM machine —based computers. In most cases, computer instructions are simple: add one number to another, move some data from one location to another, send a message to some external device, etc. These instructions are read from the computer's memory and are generally carried out executed in the order they were given. However, there are usually specialized instructions to tell the computer to jump ahead or backwards to some other place in the program and to carry on executing from there.

These are called "jump" instructions or branches. Furthermore, jump instructions may be made to happen conditionally so that different sequences of instructions may be used depending on the result of some previous calculation or some external event.

Many computers directly support subroutines by providing a type of jump that "remembers" the location it jumped from and another instruction to return to the instruction following that jump instruction.

Program execution might be likened to reading a book. While a person will normally read each word and line in sequence, they may at times jump back to an earlier place in the text or skip sections that are not of interest.

Similarly, a computer may sometimes go back and repeat the instructions in some section of the program over and over again until some internal condition is met.

This is called the flow of control within the program and it is what allows the computer to perform tasks repeatedly without human intervention. Comparatively, a person using a pocket calculator can perform a basic arithmetic operation such as adding two numbers with just a few button presses. But to add together all of the numbers from 1 to 1, would take thousands of button presses and a lot of time, with a near certainty of making a mistake.

On the other hand, a computer may be programmed to do this with just a few simple instructions. The following example is written in the MIPS assembly language :. Once told to run this program, the computer will perform the repetitive addition task without further human intervention. It will almost never make a mistake and a modern PC can complete the task in a fraction of a second. In most computers, individual instructions are stored as machine code with each instruction being given a unique number its operation code or opcode for short.

The command to add two numbers together would have one opcode; the command to multiply them would have a different opcode, and so on. The simplest computers are able to perform any of a handful of different instructions; the more complex computers have several hundred to choose from, each with a unique numerical code. Since the computer's memory is able to store numbers, it can also store the instruction codes.

This leads to the important fact that entire programs which are just lists of these instructions can be represented as lists of numbers and can themselves be manipulated inside the computer in the same way as numeric data.

The fundamental concept of storing programs in the computer's memory alongside the data they operate on is the crux of the von Neumann, or stored program, architecture.

This is called the Harvard architecture after the Harvard Mark I computer. Modern von Neumann computers display some traits of the Harvard architecture in their designs, such as in CPU caches. While it is possible to write computer programs as long lists of numbers machine language and while this technique was used with many early computers, [h] it is extremely tedious and potentially error-prone to do so in practice, especially for complicated programs.

These mnemonics are collectively known as a computer's assembly language. Converting programs written in assembly language into something the computer can actually understand machine language is usually done by a computer program called an assembler. Programming languages provide various ways of specifying programs for computers to run.

Unlike natural languages , programming languages are designed to permit no ambiguity and to be concise. They are purely written languages and are often difficult to read aloud. They are generally either translated into machine code by a compiler or an assembler before being run, or translated directly at run time by an interpreter. Sometimes programs are executed by a hybrid method of the two techniques. Machine languages and the assembly languages that represent them collectively termed low-level programming languages are generally unique to the particular architecture of a computer's central processing unit CPU.

Although considerably easier than in machine language, writing long programs in assembly language is often difficult and is also error prone.

Therefore, most practical programs are written in more abstract high-level programming languages that are able to express the needs of the programmer more conveniently and thereby help reduce programmer error. Retrieved May 26, Ars Technica. Retrieved June 2, January 29, Retrieved April 3, January 17, Redmond Magazine. Retrieved May 30, Windows Vista Team Blog. Archived from the original on November 10, Windows How-to.

SuperSite for Windows. Archived from the original on March 16, Retrieved October 23, Archived from the original on June 8, PC World. Retrieved October 25, Archived from the original RTF on September 7, Archived from the original on March 7, Archived PDF from the original on January 31, Help with Windows.

Archived from the original PDF on August 2, Supersite for Windows. Retrieved April 29, CBS Interactive. Softpedia News. Retrieved 8 June Archived from the original on January 21, Windows Hardware Engineering Conference Microsoft Windows received a major boost around this time when Aldus PageMaker appeared in a Windows version, having previously run only on Macintosh.

Some computer historians [ who? Like prior versions of Windows, version 2. In such a configuration, it could run under another multitasker like DESQview , which used the protected mode.

It was also the first version to support the High Memory Area when running on an Intel compatible processor. Version 2. In Apple Computer, Inc. Microsoft Corp. Judge William Schwarzer dropped all but 10 of Apple's claims of copyright infringement, and ruled that most of the remaining 10 were over uncopyrightable ideas.

On December 31, , Microsoft declared Windows 2. Windows 3. A few months after introduction, Windows 3. A "multimedia" version, Windows 3. This version was the precursor to the multimedia features available in Windows 3. The features listed above and growing market support from application software developers made Windows 3. Support was discontinued on December 31, Its API was incompatible with Windows.

Version 1. They cooperated with each other in developing their PC operating systems, and had access to each other's code. After an interim 1. Microsoft would later imitate much of it in Windows Still, much of the system had bit code internally which required, among other things, device drivers to be bit code as well.

It also removed Real Mode, and only ran on an or better processor. Later Microsoft also released Windows 3. In and , Microsoft released Windows for Workgroups WfW , which was available both as an add-on for existing Windows 3. Windows for Workgroups included improved network drivers and protocol stacks, and support for peer-to-peer networking.

There were two versions of Windows for Workgroups, WfW 3. Unlike prior versions, Windows for Workgroups 3. All these versions continued version 3. Even though the 3. The Windows API became the de facto standard for consumer software. On December 31, , Microsoft declared Windows 3.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continued to develop Windows NT. This successor was codenamed Cairo. In hindsight, Cairo was a much more difficult project than Microsoft had anticipated and, as a result, NT and Chicago would not be unified until Windows XP —albeit Windows , oriented to business, had already unified most of the system's bolts and gears, it was XP that was sold to home consumers like Windows 95 and came to be viewed as the final unified OS.

Driver support was lacking due to the increased programming difficulty in dealing with NT's superior hardware abstraction model. This problem plagued the NT line all the way through Windows Programmers complained that it was too hard to write drivers for NT, and hardware developers were not going to go through the trouble of developing drivers for a small segment of the market.

Additionally, although allowing for good performance and fuller exploitation of system resources, it was also resource-intensive on limited hardware, and thus was only suitable for larger, more expensive machines. However, these same features made Windows NT perfect for the LAN server market which in was experiencing a rapid boom, as office networking was becoming common.

Windows NT version 3. The Win32 API had three levels of implementation: the complete one for Windows NT, a subset for Chicago originally called Win32c missing features primarily of interest to enterprise customers at the time such as security and Unicode support, and a more limited subset called Win32s which could be used on Windows 3.

Thus Microsoft sought to ensure some degree of compatibility between the Chicago design and Windows NT, even though the two systems had radically different internal architectures. Windows NT was the first Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel. The hybrid kernel was designed as a modified microkernel , influenced by the Mach microkernel developed by Richard Rashid at Carnegie Mellon University, but without meeting all of the criteria of a pure microkernel.

As released, Windows NT 3. The 3. Support for Windows NT 3. After Windows 3. The Win32 API first introduced with Windows NT was adopted as the standard bit programming interface, with Win16 compatibility being preserved through a technique known as " thunking ". A new object-oriented GUI was not originally planned as part of the release, although elements of the Cairo user interface were borrowed and added as other aspects of the release notably Plug and Play slipped.

Microsoft did not change all of the Windows code to bit; parts of it remained bit albeit not directly using real mode for reasons of compatibility, performance, and development time.

Additionally it was necessary to carry over design decisions from earlier versions of Windows for reasons of backwards compatibility, even if these design decisions no longer matched a more modern computing environment. These factors eventually began to impact the operating system's efficiency and stability. Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the product name for Chicago when it was released on August 24, Microsoft had a double gain from its release: first, it made it impossible for consumers to run Windows 95 on a cheaper, non-Microsoft DOS, secondly, although traces of DOS were never completely removed from the system and MS DOS 7 would be loaded briefly as a part of the booting process, Windows 95 applications ran solely in enhanced mode, with a flat bit address space and virtual memory.

These features make it possible for Win32 applications to address up to 2 gigabytes of virtual RAM with another 2 GB reserved for the operating system , and in theory prevented them from inadvertently corrupting the memory space of other Win32 applications.

Three years after its introduction, Windows 95 was succeeded by Windows Unlike with Windows 3. Microsoft case, blaming unfair marketing tactics on Microsoft's part. Some companies sold new hard drives with OSR2 preinstalled officially justifying this as needed due to the hard drive's capacity.

The first Microsoft Plus! Microsoft ended extended support for Windows 95 on December 31, Microsoft released the successor to NT 3. It was Microsoft's primary business-oriented operating system until the introduction of Windows Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows NT 4. Both editions were succeeded by Windows Professional and the Windows Server Family, respectively.

This edition was succeeded by Windows XP Embedded. On June 25, , Microsoft released Windows 98 code-named Memphis , three years after the release of Windows 95 , two years after the release of Windows NT 4.

USB support in Windows 98 is marketed as a vast improvement over Windows The release continued the controversial inclusion of the Internet Explorer browser with the operating system that started with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1. The action eventually led to the filing of the United States v. Microsoft case, dealing with the question of whether Microsoft was introducing unfair practices into the market in an effort to eliminate competition from other companies such as Netscape.

In , Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition, an interim release. One of the more notable new features was the addition of Internet Connection Sharing , a form of network address translation , allowing several machines on a LAN Local Area Network to share a single Internet connection.

Hardware support through device drivers was increased and this version shipped with Internet Explorer 5. Many minor problems that existed in the first edition were fixed making it, according to many, the most stable release of the Windows 9x family. Mainstream support for Windows 98 and 98 SE ended on June 30, , and ended extended support on July 11, It has the version number Windows NT 5.

Windows has had four official service packs. It was successfully deployed both on the server and the workstation markets. Amongst Windows 's most significant new features was Active Directory , a near-complete replacement of the NT 4.

Terminal Services , previously only available as a separate edition of NT 4, was expanded to all server versions. A number of features from Windows 98 were incorporated also, such as an improved Device Manager, Windows Media Player , and a revised DirectX that made it possible for the first time for many modern games to work on the NT kernel. Windows is also the last NT-kernel Windows operating system to lack product activation. While Windows upgrades were available for Windows 95 and Windows 98, it was not intended for home users.

It was the last DOS-based operating system from Microsoft. Windows Me introduced a new multimedia-editing application called Windows Movie Maker , came standard with Internet Explorer 5.

System Restore was a notable feature that would continue to thrive in all later versions of Windows. Windows Me was conceived as a quick one-year project that served as a stopgap release between Windows 98 and Windows XP.

Many of the new features were available from the Windows Update site as updates for older Windows versions System Restore and Windows Movie Maker were exceptions. Windows Me was criticized for stability issues, as well as for lacking real mode DOS support, to the point of being referred to as the "Mistake Edition.

The initial release was met with considerable criticism , particularly in the area of security , leading to the release of three major Service Packs. Service Pack 2 provided significant improvements and encouraged widespread adoption of XP among both home and business users.

Windows XP was one of Microsoft's longest-running flagship operating systems, beginning with the public release on October 25, , for at least 5 years, and ending on January 30, , when it was succeeded by Windows Vista.

On April 25, , Microsoft launched Windows Server , a notable update to Windows Server encompassing many new security features, a new "Manage Your Server " wizard that simplifies configuring a machine for specific roles, and improved performance. It is based on the Windows NT 5. A few services not essential for server environments are disabled by default for stability reasons, most noticeable are the "Windows Audio" and "Themes" services; users have to enable them manually to get sound or the " Luna " look as per Windows XP.

The hardware acceleration for display is also turned off by default, users have to turn the acceleration level up themselves if they trust the display card driver. Among the new features are a number of management features for branch offices, file serving, printing and company-wide identity integration. Windows Server R2, an update of Windows Server , was released to manufacturing on December 6, The other CD adds many optionally installable features for Windows Server The R2 update was released for all x86 and x64 versions, except Windows Server R2 Enterprise Edition, which was not released for Itanium.

It is designed to use the expanded bit memory address space provided by the x86—64 architecture. Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is based on the Windows Server codebase, with the server features removed and client features added.

It is only available to Software Assurance customers.

 

- Windows 10 home high end devices free

 

Here's an overview of how to find computer specification requirements, versions and languages available for Windows In addition to the requirements above that перейти needed to nome Windows, some features have additional requirements. In some cases, features included with updated versions of Windows 10 will be best experienced with newer processors. Below are some additional details regarding requirements for yome features:. The following changes impact devices that are upgrading to Windows 10 from Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.

Table of Contents. System requirements for installing Windows Keeping Windows 10 up-to-date. More higgh on hard drive space requirements for updates. Feature-specific requirements for Windows Language versions. Feature deprecations and removals. Windows 10 home high end devices free are the basic requirements for installing Windows 10 on a PC. If your device does not meet these requirements, you may not have as great an experience with Windows 10 and might want to consider purchasing a new PC.

Internet connectivity is necessary to perform updates and to download and take advantage of some features. Switching a device out of Windows 10 in S mode also requires internet connectivity. Learn more about S mode here. There may be additional requirements over time for updates, as well as requirements to turn on higu features within the OS.

Windows 10 is designed to deliver updates for the supported lifetime of the device. Two types of updates may be provided: quality updates and feature updates. Quality updates include both security and non-security updates and are typically winfows to be released once a month.

Feature updates include quality updates as well as add ens features to Windows 10 and are typically provided twice a year. Ensuring that your device receives these updates and is kept up-to-date is important for your device security. When an update is available — and if sufficient windows 10 home high end devices free space is available on your device — it will be automatically installed. See additional applicable details in the following notes.

Important notes about updates:. Some of the disk space needed for installing updates is only temporarily required. Typically, ten days after installing an update, a disk cleanup will be automatically performed to delete copies of the windows 10 home high end devices free, unneeded Windows files and free up space again.

Not all features windows 10 home high end devices free an update will work on all devices. An internet connection is required to perform updates and Internet access ISP fees might apply.

If you need assistance installing an update, Windows 10 Update Assistant may be able to help. The size of the Windows operating system that devicez with your device, and the amount of /10952.txt needed to download and install Windows updates, are highly variable as they depend on a variety of factors. Visit here to learn why. The factors that impact the windows 10 home high end devices free of free hard drive space needed to take an update include: the version of Windows previously installed on the machine, the amount of disk space available to reuse from Windows files, such as the virtual memory pagefile or hibernation file, which applications are installed on your device and how those applications store data.

You may need to take steps to free up windows 10 home high end devices free space by, for example, windows 10 home high end devices free some files to a windows 10 home high end devices free storage service such as OneDrive an app installed on Windows 10 devicesremoving unneeded files from your device or inserting hgh USB flash drive to complete the update. For more information, see Free winodws space to install the latest Windows 10 update or visit the related FAQ. TPM 2. Check with your PC manufacturer to confirm if your device supports the correct TPM version and Windows vista home premium no internet connection free for the scenario you want to enable.

Microsoft account is required for some features. Secure boot requires firmware that supports UEFI v2. Skype is available only in select countries and regions. Calling to select countries and regions only. Excludes special, premium and non-geographic numbers. For details, visit the Office FAQ page. Snap : The number of applications that can be snapped will depend upon the minimum resolution for the application with a limit of two applications in Tablet mode and four applications in Desktop mode.

Speech recognition will vary by device microphone. For a better speech experience, читать will need a: High fidelity microphone array Windows 10 home high end devices free driver with microphone array geometry exposed Tablet mode is available on tablets and 2-in-1s with GPIO indicators or those that have a laptop and slate indicator will be able to be configured to enter "tablet mode" automatically.

Touch читать далее To use touch, you need a tablet or a monitor that supports multi-touch. Two-factor authentication requires the use of a PIN, Biometric finger print reader windows 10 home high end devices free illuminated infrared cameraor a phone with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth capabilities. Windows Hello requires a camera configured for near infrared IR imaging or fingerprint reader for biometric windows 10 home high end devices free. Xbox application requires an Xbox Live account, which is not available in all regions.

For the most up-to-date list of regions, please go to Xbox Live Countries and Regions website. Additional languages available as Language Interface Packs. When upgrading to Windows 10 from a previous version of Windows such as Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Please see below for information regarding some of the key removed features:. Starting with the May Update Windows 10, versionthe sync feature has been removed from all devices.

Due to this change, you will only be able to access messages from the device that received больше на странице message.

In a future release, any connection to a Wi-Fi network using посетить страницу old ciphers will be disallowed. Cortana : Cortana has been updated and enhanced in the Windows 10 May Update Windows 10, version With these changes, some previously available consumer skills such as music, connected home and third-party skills will no longer be available.

Get detailed information here. Use the Phone page in the Settings app to sync your mobile phone with your PC. It includes all the Phone Companion features. HomeGroup: HomeGroup was removed starting with the April Update Windows 10, versionbut you still have the ability to share printers, files and folders.

Any homee, files and folders you shared using HomeGroup will continue to be shared. Instead of using HomeGroup, you can now share printers, files and folders by using features that are built into Windows Share your network printers Share files продолжение здесь File Explorer For Xbox по ссылке HomeGroup users, please see more information on streaming media People app: In Windows 10, the People app shows drvices from Microsoft contacts and contacts from your school or work organisation under Conversations.

Starting with the April Update Windows 10, versionin order to see new mail по этому адресу the People app from these specific contacts, you need to be online, and you need to have signed in with either a Microsoft account or, for work or school organisation accounts, through the MailPeople or Calendar apps.

For reading PDF files, Microsoft Edge is the recommended replacement app and offers similar functionality as well as additional features including improved accessibility support, improved Inking, and support for AskCortana. Note that users of earlier Windows 10 versions can continue using the Reader app. After Windows Journal is removed, you will no по этому адресу be able to open or edit Journal files with. JNT or. JTP extensions. We encourage you страница switch to OneNote to replace Windows Journal.

If you need to open or edit your journal files, more information is available here. You are no longer able to play music or video files that were protected by this rights management technology.

Click here to learn more. Windows 7 desktop gadgets: These will be removed as part of installing Windows Solitaire, Minesweeper and Hearts Games: These games that came pre-installed on Windows 7 will be removed /26329.txt part of installing the Windows 10 upgrade.

Microsoft has released our version of Solitaire and Minesweeper called the "Microsoft Solitaire Collection" and "Microsoft Minesweeper". If you have Windows Live Essentials installed emd your system, the OneDrive application is removed and replaced with the inbox version of OneDrive. Вот ссылка place holder files: OneDrive placeholder files are not supported in Windows Windows 8.

In Windows 10, users can choose which folders to sync from OneDrive settings. Snap: Snap is limited to two ddvices in Tablet mode. Follow Microsoft Windows. Hard drive winxows. Graphics card:. Internet Connection:.

   

 

Windows 10 home high end devices free. Windows 10

   

Or we can help you choose. Windows Hello allows for more secure and personal sign-ins with biometrics, like your face or fingerprint. Windows enables your touchscreen PC or 2-in-1 to provide a touch-first experience for those times when you want your device to feel like a tablet.

Built-in, routinely updated, and at no extra cost to you. These computers are equipped with eSIM. It means they have a SIM built in and you can set up the device from almost anywhere—even from home—by using the mobile plans app. You don't have to go to a physical store. These computers require you to purchase and activate a SIM card from your mobile provider separately.

With Windows 10 and Windows 11 in S mode, you can search the web or stream movies with Microsoft Edge. You can also choose your own cloud storage and download your favorite apps for Windows all with the advanced Windows security that keeps you and your loved ones protected.

And if you want a choice of browsers, you can switch out of S mode at any time. Windows 11 Pro edition is not available in S mode. The filters below will help you narrow your search. Select the show all filters button to see the complete list. Check the operating system listed for each PC as it indicates whether a PC is preloaded with Windows 11 or comes with a free upgrade when it becomes available.

Specific timing on upgrade eligibility will vary. Find the right one for you: compare up to 3 Windows devices by selecting the compare checkbox above each device.

Get tasks done in laptop mode. Chill out on the couch in tablet mode. Wherever life happens, Windows 2-in-1 PCs can follow with touchscreen and digital pen capabilities that adapt to you. Not the other way around. Take power and speed anywhere you go with a Windows laptop. All-in-ones arrive in a singular, stylish, and sleek form-factor instead of a separate monitor and tower. If you want the power and graphics of a desktop computer without it taking up desk real-estate, these are for you.

Bring reality-rivaling graphics and high performance anywhere with a Windows gaming PC. Wi-Fi and tethering are now optional. LTE-enabled laptops can use mobile networks just like your smartphone does, giving you constant connectivity wherever you go.

With the broadest choice of devices—across style, features, and form factors—we and our ecosystem of partners, can ensure that there is innovation for each of us. No matter your budget or style, we can help you find the right fit by answering a few quick questions. Tell your family, friends, or that special someone what you want to unwrap this year. By sending this email, unless you check the box or are otherwise subscribed, Microsoft will not keep or use your email address, or the email address to whom you send the hint, for any other purpose.

We hope you unwrap a new PC this year. Upgrade timing may vary by device. Internet service fees may apply. Features and app availability may vary by region. Certain features require specific hardware see Windows 11 Specifications. It also provides the ability to hot-add supported hardware.

Windows Server Enterprise is also the required edition to issue custom certificate templates. Windows Server Datacenter is designed [25] for infrastructures demanding high security and reliability. Windows Server is available for IA, Itanium, and x64 processors. It supports a maximum of 32 physical processors on IA platform or 64 physical processors on x64 and IA hardware. The Datacenter edition, like the Enterprise edition, supports 8-node clustering. Clustering increases availability and fault tolerance of server installations by distributing and replicating the service among many servers.

This edition supports clustering with each cluster having its own dedicated storage, or with all cluster nodes connected to a common SAN. Windows Compute Cluster Server CCS , released in June , is designed for high-end applications that require high performance computing clusters. It is designed to be deployed on numerous computers to be clustered together to achieve supercomputing speeds.

Each Compute Cluster Server network comprises at least one controlling head node and subordinate processing nodes that carry out most of the work. It ties nodes together with a powerful inter-process communication mechanism which can be complex because of communications between hundreds or even thousands of processors working in parallel.

The application programming interface consists of over functions. A job launcher enables users to execute jobs to be executed in the computing cluster. Windows Storage Server , a part of the Windows Server series, is a specialized server operating system for network-attached storage NAS.

Launched in at Storage Decisions in Chicago, it is optimized for use in file and print sharing and also in storage area network SAN scenarios. It is only available through Original equipment manufacturers OEMs. Windows Storage Server NAS equipment can be headless , which means that they are without any monitors, keyboards or mice, and are administered remotely. Such devices are plugged into any existing IP network and the storage capacity is available to all users.

Multiple such NAS servers can be clustered to appear as a single device, which allows responsibility for serving clients to be shared in such a way that if one server fails then other servers can take over often termed a failover which also improves fault-tolerance. Windows Storage Server can also be used to create a Storage Area Network , in which the data is transferred in terms of chunks rather than files, thus providing more granularity to the data that can be transferred.

This provides higher performance to database and transaction processing applications. Single instance storage SIS scans storage volumes for duplicate files, and moves the duplicate files to the common SIS store. The file on the volume is replaced with a link to the file.

Windows Storage Server R2 provides an index-based, full-text search based on the indexing engine already built into Windows server.

Windows Storage Server can be promoted to function as a domain controller; however, this edition is not licensed to run directory services. It can be joined to an existing domain as a member server. Windows Small Business Server SBS is a software suite which includes Windows Server and additional technologies aimed at providing a small business with a complete technology solution. SBS has the following design limitations, mainly affecting Active Directory: [30].

Windows Home Server was announced on January 7, , at the Consumer Electronics Show by Bill Gates and is intended to be a solution for homes with multiple connected PCs to offer file sharing, automated backups, and remote access.

Intended use was for building firewall, VPN caching servers and similar appliances. Availability of the original version ended May 28, Availability of R2 ended March 5, End of extended support was July 14, all variants except Storage Server [9] , and End of Licence was May 28, R2 and original.

All variants continued to receive Critical security updates until the end of extended support: [37]. While many features of the bit variant of Windows XP were brought over into Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, other limitations imposed by constraints such as only supporting bit drivers, and support for bit programs being dropped led to incompatibilities with the bit Windows XP editions available.

Among the improvements are many of the same updates that were provided to Windows XP users with Service Pack 2.

Features that are added with Service Pack 1 include:. A full list of updates is available in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. Service Pack 2 for Windows Server was released on March 13, This was followed by build , known as Beta 2 Refresh. The final build is Microsoft has described Service Pack 2 as a "standard" service pack release containing previously released security updates, hotfixes, and reliability and performance improvements. Service Pack 2 also adds Windows Server Scalable Networking Pack SNP , [48] which allows hardware acceleration for processing network packets, thereby enabling faster throughput.

Windows Server R2 is an updated release of Windows Server , which contains a copy of Windows Server SP1 on one CD and a host of optionally installed new features on another disc, similar to Microsoft Plus!

New features of Windows Server R2 include: [51]. On July 13, , Windows Server 's mainstream support expired and the extended support phase began.

During the extended support phase, Microsoft continued to provide security updates; however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes are no longer being offered.

Although Windows Server is unsupported, Microsoft released an emergency security patch in May for the OS as well as other unsupported versions of Windows including Windows Vista and Windows 7 RTM without a service pack , to address a vulnerability that was being leveraged by the WannaCry ransomware attack. Anonymous users from managed to compile the Windows Server source code, as well as a Twitter user who posted videos of the process on YouTube proving that the code was genuine, [57] but was removed from the platform on copyright grounds by Microsoft.

The leak was incomplete as it was missing the Winlogon source code and some other components. Microsoft issued a statement stating that it was investigating the leaks. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Server operating system by Microsoft released in This article has multiple issues.

Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. Learn how and when to remove these template messages. This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article.

October This article needs additional citations for verification. Universal Print requires a minimum of Windows 10, version To keep with the latest news on Universal Print, bookmark the Universal Print blog.

Note: these features do not necessarily require Windows 10, version We continue the work with our partner community around Secured-core technology that combines identity, virtualization, operating system, hardware, and firmware protection to add another crucial layer of security underneath the operating system and ensure the integrity of the boot process.

New devices that include AMD's new Ryzen Pro chip, built on Microsoft's Secured-core technology, help prevent sophisticated data theft attacks and can be easily managed with Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Before I close out this post, I also wanted to highlight a couple of Office features I came across recently as they can help your personal productivity and documentation efforts.

The first is a Microsoft Outlook calendar feature that enables you to schedule meetings that end x minutes early. In a recent update of Office, I noticed that I now have the ability to schedule my meetings to end a few minutes early. If you're like me, you are scheduled for back-to-back-to-back meetings with no time to stretch, grab a cup of coffee, or take a moment to attend to personal matters. In the Calendar options, select End appointments and meetings early and then select the appropriate number of minutes.

The second is Microsoft Word's new proofing and inclusivity options. If you're a single-spacer like me, you like to put a single space between sentences. But many of us learned to type by entering two spaces. Microsoft Word can help us single-spacers by marking two spaces as incorrect grammar! Select Settings and scroll down to Punctuation Conventions then select the appropriate checkboxes and drop-down options.

Windows Virtual Desktop continues to evolve and you can keep up with the latest enhancements by bookmarking the Windows Virtual Desktop community and staying tuned to the Windows IT Pro Blog.

Is there a Windows Server release with this release of Windows 10? Windows Server, version is also available beginning today. To learn more, see Windows Server, version now generally available. How can I test new builds of Windows 10 prior to their release, so I can begin my testing early?

The Windows Insider Program for Business is open for anyone to join. This program gives you access to preview builds of Windows 10 and Windows Server so you can try out the new features and provide feedback directly to Microsoft.

As an additional benefit, you can deploy6 these early builds of Windows across your organization to test your apps, hardware, and processes. The next LTSC release can be expected toward the end of Customers currently using the LTSC for special-purpose devices should start working to upgrade those devices to Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC as mainstream support for that release will continue until January 9, Can I upgrade our devices from Windows 7 directly to this new update?

You can upgrade directly from Windows 7 or Windows 8. We strongly encourage you to begin your upgrade process immediately, as Windows 7 reached end of support date on January 14, , and Windows 8. I know that I can defer updates using Windows Update for Business, but what exactly does that mean? Windows Update for Business allows you to set policies that specify that you only want specific devices, or groups of devices, to receive updates that are xx days old.

For example, if you are running Windows 10, version and set a deferral policy for feature updates of days, that means when the next release version in this case is days old days past its GA release date , it will begin to deploy on the devices to which you have applied that policy. Do I have to have a single Windows Update for Business deferral policy in my organization? You can have as many deferral policies as necessary. This provides great flexibility, enabling you to roll Windows 10 out in waves.

For example:. What if my applications are not compatible with Windows 10, version ? Windows 10 is the most compatible Windows operating system ever. For more information about Desktop App Assure, see Standing behind our application compatibility promise. To support the release of Windows 10, version , we have released updated versions of the following resources:.

Also, if you haven't seen it yet, the Windows release health dashboard introduced with the release of Windows 10, version provides you with timely information on the status of the Windows 10, version rollout, details on any known issues including the status of those issues, workarounds, and resolutions , and other important announcements, such as those related to lifecycle updates, upcoming events, and best practices.

For help with configuring and deploying updates, please see the following resources:. To see a summary of the latest documentation updates, see What's new in Windows 10, version IT pro content on Docs. For information on what's new for developers, see What's new in Windows 10 for developers, build And, for a list of features and functionality that have been removed from Windows 10, or might be removed in future releases, see Features and functionality removed in Windows For a closer look at these improvements, save the date for a one-hour webcast on Wednesday, June 10, at a.

Update: This webcast will be rescheduled. Stay tuned to the Windows IT Pro blog for an update. And, if you need help with deploying and managing updates across your organization, myself and members of the Windows and Microsoft Endpoint Manager engineering teams will be holding office hours on Tech Community for the next two weeks.

Finally, for the latest updates on new releases, tools, and resources, stay tuned to this blog and follow us MSWindowsITPro on Twitter. You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in. Products 68 Special Topics 42 Video Hub Most Active Hubs Microsoft Teams.

Security, Compliance and Identity. Microsoft Edge Insider. Microsoft FastTrack.