The checkered flag of the leader

Once I saw an article in a newspaper which said that you hardly could find a computer where Norton Commander or its analogue wasn't installed. I think you also can't find a computer where there is no Microsoft product.

Microsoft's success began when IBM asked it to develop an operating system for its new computer. So MS-DOS appeared. Later such systems as DR-DOS and PC-DOS emerged, but Microsoft's aggressive policy didn't allow them to become popular. In Russia the system PTS-DOS (PTS means PhysTechSoft) was developed, but I don't think it has been installed even in one per cent of computers in Russia. MS-DOS remained the most popular operating system until 1995.

In 1981 the first version of MS Windows was issued. It wasn't an operating system, because when computer was started, it loaded MS-DOS, and later one could run Windows. But Windows also became very popular. It was the first system that allowed running more than one program at a time. It wasn't relevant for users in 1981, because most of them had no hard disk, but it was important for companies. And as computers have been developed, and hard disks appeared in every computer, and they began to grow (it's difficult to believe, but ten years ago we considered a hard disk which had the size of 40 Mb to be huge), Windows appeared in each computer.

IBM became the competitor of Microsoft, when it developed the operating system OS/2. A lot of computer specialists think that OS/2 is much better than Windows. I don't know. I haven't worked with OS/2.

But the fact is that it has been never installed in more than 10 per cent of computers throughout the world.

In 1995, Windows finally became an operating system. The system Windows '95 was issued. Nearly everyone thinks that his duty is to abuse Windows '95 (in FIDO network it is called only MustDie95), but nearly everyone now works with this system.

When the market of operating systems was seized by Microsoft, it began seizing the market of Internet browsers. Before, the leader of this market was the company Netscape, with its browser Netscape Navigator. And Microsoft having issued its Microsoft Explorer, there wasn't any considerable reaction. But when Microsoft began to deliver its browser with Windows '95, it became much more popular. By the end of 1997, 31 per cent of the market belonged to Microsoft Explorer.

Now Bill Gates, the president of Microsoft, wants to design a computer, which will control all everyday apparatus at home. You will be able to operate with any apparatus, including lamps, from this computer. In any case, there is already such a computer in Gates' house, and through Internet Gates can manipulate his apparatus even from the other side of the earth. But when he tried to demonstrate it at the exhibition MacExpo '97, the computer hung up.