Advanced power management ( APM ) is an API developed by Intel and Microsoft and released in 1992 which enables an operating system running an IBM-compatible personal computer to work with the BIOS ( part of the computer's firmware ) to achieve power management.

In 1975, MITS released Altair BASIC, developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen as the company Micro-Soft, which grew into today's corporate giant, Microsoft.

The technology was first introduced in software in January 2000 as an always-on feature of Microsoft Reader, which was released to the public in August 2000.

Doom became a " killer app " that all capable consoles and operating systems were expected to have, and versions of Doom have subsequently been released for the following systems: DOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple Macintosh, Super NES, Sega 32X, Sony PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, iOS, Symbian OS, RISC OS, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, Tapwave Zodiac, 3DO, Xbox, and Xbox Live Arcade.

Two other groups contributed to the design of the language and developed implementations: Harlequin released a commercial IDE for Microsoft Windows and Carnegie Mellon University released an open source compiler for Unix systems.

Netscape's competitor, Microsoft, released Internet Explorer 3. 0 later the same year with a port of JavaScript called JScript.

In 1997, Netscape and Microsoft released version 4. 0 of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer respectively, adding support for Dynamic HTML ( DHTML ), functionality enabling changes to a loaded HTML document.

Initially developed ( though not publicly released ) on the Atari ST, the first commercial release was for the 16-bit Microsoft MS-DOS platform and was proprietary.

Craig ported his original Atari implementation to the 16-bit Microsoft MS-DOS platform and Euphoria was first released ( version 1. 0 ) in July, 1993 under a proprietary licence.

The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1. 0, released on 20 November 1985, achieved little popularity.

Microsoft Windows scored a significant success with Windows 3. 0, released in May 1990.

Later Microsoft also released Windows 3. 11, a touch-up to Windows 3. 1 which included all of the patches and updates that followed the release of Windows 3. 1 in 1992.

Around the same time, Microsoft released Windows for Workgroups ( WfW ), which was available both as an add-on for existing Windows 3. 1 installations and in a version that included the base Windows environment and the networking extensions all in one package.

Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the product name for Chicago when it was released on 24 August 1995.

Microsoft released Windows NT 4. 0 to manufacturing in July 1996, one year after the release of Windows 95.

On 25 June 1998, Microsoft released Windows 98 ( codenamed Memphis ).

In 1999, Microsoft released Windows 98 Second Edition, an interim release.

Microsoft released Windows 2000 in February 2000.

On 25 August 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP ( codenamed " Whistler ").

December 2005, Microsoft released Windows Server 2003 R2, which is actually Windows Server 2003 with SP1 ( Service Pack 1 ) plus an add-on package.

On 25 April 2005, Microsoft released Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003, x64 Editions in Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter SKUs.

In July 2006, Microsoft released a thin-client version of Windows XP Service Pack 2, called Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs ( WinFLP ).

Even though Microsoft released a cheap version of Adventure with its initial version of MS-DOS 1. 0 for IBM PCs, Zork I was still a popular seller for the PC, thanks to the superior quality of its writing and packaging.

Many companies sold TCP / IP stacks for Windows until Microsoft released its own TCP / IP stack in Windows 95.

On 25 April 2003 Microsoft launched Windows Server 2003, a notable update to Windows 2000 Server encompassing many new security features, a new " Manage Your Server " wizard that simplifies configuring a machine for specific roles, and improved performance.

This allows the user to update contact, schedule, or other information on their computer, using software such as Microsoft Outlook or ACT !, and have that same data transferred to PDA — or transfer updated information from the PDA back to the computer.

This version of TAPI was available as a downloadable update and was the first version to be supported on both the Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT / 2000 platforms.

This vulnerability was resolved in a security update on January 5, 2006 on Microsoft TechNet ( MS06-001 ) and generally released January 10, 2006.

Microsoft strives to continually update Direct3D to support the latest technology available on 3D graphics cards.

Only two games that sold a significant volume, Lego Island and Lego Rock Raiders, were based on the Direct3D retained mode, so Microsoft did not update the retained mode after DirectX 3. 0.

Direct3D 10. 1 was announced by Microsoft shortly after the release of Direct3D 10 as a minor update.

Windows Server 2003 uses the range 1025 to 5000 by default, until Microsoft security update MS08-037 from 2008 is installed, after which it uses the IANA range by default.

With Offline Update burned to a CD or DVD, a technician can update Windows 2000 / XP / Vista and Microsoft Office 2003 / 2007 without an Internet connection.

Partial downloads are also extensively used by Microsoft Windows Update so that extremely large update packages can download in the background and pause halfway through the download, if the user turns off their computer or disconnects from the Internet.

On 7 April 2008, Microsoft released an update to the MFC classes as an out-of-band update to Visual Studio 2008 and MFC 9.

The update features new user interface constructs, including the Ribbon user interface of Microsoft Office 2007 and associated UI widgets, fully customizable toolbars, docking panes like Visual Studio 2005 ( which can either be freely floated or docked to any side ) and document tabs.

A persistent bug in Microsoft Update affecting XP computers with limited internal memory is that it allows the update programs wuauclt. exe and svchost. exe to claim 100 % of the computers ' memory for extended periods of time ( up to hours ) making affected computers unusable.

* Microsoft Update service ( http :// update. microsoft. com / microsoftupdate )

A next-generation update of BurgerTime was announced by MonkeyPaw Games for the WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Microsoft Windows in late March 2011.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, the first major update to Internet Explorer 6 in half a decade, was only available for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.

On April 24, 2007, Microsoft released an update called XNA Game Studio Express 1. 0 Refresh.

In March 2012, Microsoft released an update for a critical security vulnerability in the RDP protocol that allowed a Windows computer to be compromised by unauthenticated clients and computer worms.

* Microsoft Works 8. 5 ( Free update for Works 8. 0 and Microsoft Works Suite 2006 users )

With version 9 of Internet Explorer, Microsoft intends to comply with many modern web standards, and also intends to significantly update the layout engine to be more competitive and modern compared to other current layout engines.

On 23 March 2005 a version of Encarta was published using the new spelling, and on 14 April an update of Microsoft Office was offered.

On June 13, 2003, Microsoft announced that it was ceasing further development of Internet Explorer for Mac and the final update was released on July 11, 2003.