Operating Systems
Operating Systems. This is what version of Microsoft Windows you are running. Most likely it will be something like Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. An operating system is the main graphical user interface (GUI) that starts up when you press the power button on your computer. This is different than office, which is also made by Microsoft. Microsoft Office contains programs like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. For the current article, we will ignore MS Office. We need to start at the basics.
THE BASICS:
Now, there are different Operating Systems (OS) than Microsoft Windows, such as Mac OS, Linux, Unix and a few others. This post only focuses on the Windows OS as it is the most popular (most popular on home computers and laptops). From now on, we will mostly pretend that Windows is the only one, because that is the only one we will actually talk about. If we bring up another one in the future, we will be very specific. Moving on. For any modern program to run, you must be running some OS. Microsoft Windows 7 is the latest and becoming increasingly popular as people buy new computers. When you first turn on your computer it will have a loading icon with the Windows logo in the center of your screen. This is a good sign. If you ever do not see this, there may be a problem. The only exception to this rule is if you are running Windows Vista, in this case, there is no logo, just a loading bar.
Windows XP (released Oct 25, 2001):
Windows Vista (released Jan 30, 2007):
Windows 7 (released Oct 22, 2009):
Those are the three most recent releases from Microsoft as far as Operating Systems go. They have another one in the works right now simply called Windows 8, but we have a little while before that one gets released. So now when your computer starts, you should see one of these, and you will be able to tell which version of Windows you have.
There are other ways to tell what version of Windows you have installed on your computer when the computer is already booted and running (which it should be as you are reading this). This would involve right-clicking on ‘My Computer’ (Windows XP) or ‘Computer’ (Vista, 7) in the Start Menu and clicking ‘Properties’ at the bottom of the menu that comes up. In that first screen that comes up it will usually tell you things like your computer manufacturer, how much system RAM you have (memory), processor speed and type, and what version of Windows you are running. Because the life of most computers now are between two and five years, most computers that are still running Windows XP as the operating system are getting old enough to have to start replacing. Do not be afraid, Windows 7 is amazing.
Now that you know what version of Windows you are running, the next time someone asks you or a website asks you so you can download the right version of a program or what not, you are armed with the knowledge to make an informed decision!
Just as a side note, we will be talking about hardware other than computers in the future, such as phones and tablets. These can, but do not always run Windows. On these devices, Windows is actually the minority. Just so you know.