I thought it might be fun to do a quick walk through on the history of Windows. Microsoft already has a slightly outdated history page setup, and I wanted to do something a little different than them.
So the first thing that I’ve got below is a video that has both screenshots from Windows Operating Systems over the past 20 years, including the startup sounds once they had become available. Below the video I’ve got a bulleted list of release dates for all of the major milestones.
Can you believe that Windows has been out over 20 years already?
–Video–
Here is a video with a lot of screenshots from past versions of Windows. It also gives you the history of Windows startup sounds once you get to Windows 3.1 and beyond.
–Release Dates–
Here is a Windows timeline of releases that span more than 20 years:
- Windows 1.0 - November 20, 1985
- Windows 2.0 - December 9, 1987
- Windows 3.0 - May 22, 1990
- Windows 3.1 - April 6, 1992
- Windows NT 3.1 - July 27, 1993
- Windows 95 - August 24, 1995
- Windows NT 4.0 - August 24, 1996
- Windows 98 - June 25, 1998
- Windows 98 SE - May 9, 1999
- Windows 2000 - February 17, 2000
- Windows Me - September 14, 2000
- Windows XP - October 25, 2001
- Windows Server 2003 - April 25, 2003
- Windows XP Media Center Edition 2003 - December 18, 2003
- Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 - October 12, 2004
- Windows XP Professional x64 Edition - April 25, 2005
- Windows Vista (corporate launch) - November 30, 2006
- Windows Vista (consumer launch) - January 30, 2007
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Tags: Software, Windows, Microsoft, Release Date, Screenshots


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Cool video. That Longhorn sound was quite okay. The new Vista sounds don’t do it for me. They’re a step backwards.
I actually like the Vista sounds better because they have relatively shorter duration while being very professional in my opinion. Win98 made me feel like sitting in the Opera lol
I like the Vista sounds better as well. In a way they are actually soothing, and leaps and bounds better than older versions of Windows. If you’re sitting in a meeting or a class and you hear the Vista startup sound it won’t be nearly as bad as the XP startup sound, which causes everyone to turn and stare.
I like the longhorn one the most (remember hearing it all the time with the old version of Vista Transformation Pack), but i can live with the vista one.
There is no version called XP Media Center Edition 2003. It’s 2002, 2004 and 2005. There was a free upgrade, *I think but not sure* for 2003.