With everybody looking ahead to the latest and greatest (and slowest) version of Windows, I think it's fun to look backwards to the earliest versions.

Before version 3.0, Windows was not a well-known product. So obtaining copies took a little work. After posting a request on Usenet I was able to get copies of Windows 1.01 and 2.03.

These screenshots were taken by running Windows in a DOS window from Windows 95. I ran Windows in a Window. Neat, huh?

Windows 1.01

Total size installed: 1,119,845 bytes.

	Startup Logo - Hey, that's not the Microsoft logo! Note the 1985 copyright date.
	Applications - This shows two applications running at once. The creators of Windows 1 decided that overlapping windows would cause confusion, so the system enforces window tiling. The top program is MS-DOS Executive, the equivalent of the later Program Manager or Explorer. It's basically just a file manager, listing all files in a directory. No filetype icons, no shortcuts, no long filenames, no nothin'. The bottom program is Write (precursor to Wordpad). It's actually pretty advanced, in that I was able to draw a small picture in Paint, copy it to the clipboard, and paste it into my text document.
	Games! - As I recall, Reversi was bundled with Windows up until version 3.0, then it was removed in favor of Minesweeper. It's basically like the boardgame Othello. Note the minimized Executive icon in the corner. Minimizing a window allows more room for other windows.

Windows 2.03

Total size installed: 1,458,928 bytes.

	Startup Logo - Two years later, they have their familiar logo in place.
	Applications - The same applications, only now you can overlap your windows. Executive looks slightly different, with bold filenames and such. Looks like proportional fonts were still in the works. I drew the smiley face in Paint and pasted it into Write.
	Control Panel - Here you can see the control panel for choosing colors for the various windows components. Pick from any of 8 brilliant EGA colors! I should note that both versions of Windows are using the EGA adapter at 640×400, which is the best one available. I think you could probably run it at 10×7 monochrome if you wanted to; there's probably a driver for it. I was thinking the other day how cool it would be to write a 1600×1200×32 video driver for these old OSes. If anybody manages to do so you'll have my undying admiration.
	Executive - Another look at MS-DOS Executive. Supposedly you can run msdos.exe and you'll get a DOS shell, but because neither version of Windows supports more than 640K of memory, it's not feasible to actually do it. So I'm not sure of the point. Still, that's a pretty efficiently written program, amounting to a single byte!
	About - This shows some system info. Look at all that memory!

Windows 3.1

These are just a couple screenshots from Windows 3.1. I took them by running them with Bochs, a PC emulator for... well, PCs. What's the point? The point is that you can run a complete virtual machine with any configuration you want without having to sacrifice your machine. The VM this is running in has a 100MB soft harddrive and older, more compatible hardware so I can run old games and OSes. With the hardware I have now I'd never be able to get that stuff running no matter what I did. There are lots of great uses. You can even install Linux or NT into the VM.

	Startup Logo - Tada!
	DOS Window - At last! Enough memory to run DOS in a window! Susan Kare's well-known icon designs are in place as well. Much better than faceless filenames.