1.
Microsoft
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Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup, as of 2016, it was the worlds largest software maker by revenue, and one of the worlds most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4,1975, to develop and it rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows. The companys 1986 initial public offering, and subsequent rise in its share price, since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions. In May 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion, in June 2012, Microsoft entered the personal computer production market for the first time, with the launch of the Microsoft Surface, a line of tablet computers. The word Microsoft is a portmanteau of microcomputer and software, Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion for computer programming, sought to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data, which offered a computer that tracked and analyzed automobile traffic data. Allen went on to pursue a degree in science at Washington State University. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systemss Altair 8800 microcomputer, Allen suggested that they could program a BASIC interpreter for the device, after a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS requested a demonstration. Since they didnt actually have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter and they officially established Microsoft on April 4,1975, with Gates as the CEO. Allen came up with the name of Micro-Soft, as recounted in a 1995 Fortune magazine article. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office, the company moved to a new home in Bellevue, Washington in January 1979. Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, however, it was MS-DOS that solidified the companys dominance. For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, branding it as MS-DOS, following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had to engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles. Due to various factors, such as MS-DOSs available software selection, the company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkins disease, while jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20,1985. Once Microsoft informed IBM of NT, the OS/2 partnership deteriorated, in 1990, Microsoft introduced its office suite, Microsoft Office
2.
Computer program
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A computer program is a collection of instructions that performs a specific task when executed by a computer. A computer requires programs to function, and typically executes the programs instructions in a processing unit. A computer program is written by a computer programmer in a programming language. From the program in its form of source code, a compiler can derive machine code—a form consisting of instructions that the computer can directly execute. Alternatively, a program may be executed with the aid of an interpreter. A part of a program that performs a well-defined task is known as an algorithm. A collection of programs, libraries and related data are referred to as software. Computer programs may be categorized along functional lines, such as software or system software. The earliest programmable machines preceded the invention of the digital computer, in 1801, Joseph-Marie Jacquard devised a loom that would weave a pattern by following a series of perforated cards. Patterns could be weaved and repeated by arranging the cards, in 1837, Charles Babbage was inspired by Jacquards loom to attempt to build the Analytical Engine. The names of the components of the device were borrowed from the textile industry. In the textile industry, yarn was brought from the store to be milled, the device would have had a store—memory to hold 1,000 numbers of 40 decimal digits each. Numbers from the store would then have then transferred to the mill. It was programmed using two sets of perforated cards—one to direct the operation and the other for the input variables, however, after more than 17,000 pounds of the British governments money, the thousands of cogged wheels and gears never fully worked together. During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Ada Lovelace translated the memoir of Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, the memoir covered the Analytical Engine. The translation contained Note G which completely detailed a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers using the Analytical Engine and this note is recognized by some historians as the worlds first written computer program. In 1936, Alan Turing introduced the Universal Turing machine—a theoretical device that can model every computation that can be performed on a Turing complete computing machine and it is a finite-state machine that has an infinitely long read/write tape. The machine can move the back and forth, changing its contents as it performs an algorithm
3.
Cortana
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Cortana is an intelligent personal assistant created by Microsoft for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft Band, Xbox One, iOS and Android. Cortana can set reminders, recognize natural voice without the requirement for keyboard input, Cortana is currently available in English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese language editions, depending on the software platform and region in which it is used. Cortana mainly competes against assistants such as Apples Siri, Googles Google Assistant, Samsungs Bixby, Cortana was demonstrated for the first time at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference in San Francisco. It has been launched as a key ingredient of Microsofts planned makeover of the operating systems for Windows Phone. The development of Cortana started in 2009 in the Microsoft Speech products team with general manager Zig Serafin, Heck and Serafin established the vision, mission, and long-range plan for Microsofts digital-personal-assistant and they built a team with the expertise to create the initial prototypes for Cortana. To develop the Cortana digital assistant, the team interviewed human personal assistants and these interviews inspired a number of unique features in Cortana, including the assistants notebook feature. Originally Cortana was only meant to be a codename, but a petition on Windows Phones UserVoice site that proved to be made the codename official. In January 2015, Microsoft announced the availability of Cortana for Windows 10 desktops, on May 26,2015, Microsoft announced that Cortana would also be available on other mobile platforms. An Android release was set for July 2015, but an Android APK file containing Cortana was leaked ahead of its release and it was officially released, along with an iOS version, in December 2015. During E32015, Microsoft announced that Cortana would come to the Xbox One as part of a universally designed Windows 10 update for the console, Microsoft has integrated Cortana into numerous products such as Microsoft Edge, the browser bundled with Windows 10. Microsofts Cortana assistant is deeply integrated into its Edge browser, Cortana can find opening-hours when on restaurant sites, show retail coupons for websites, or show weather information in the address bar. At the Worldwide Partners Conference 2015 Microsoft demonstrated Cortana integration with upcoming products such as GigJam, Microsofts Windows in the car concept includes Cortana. The concept makes it possible for drivers to make restaurant reservations, as of 2016, Cortana can underline certain words and phrases in Skype conversations that relate to contacts and corporations. Cortana can set reminders, recognize natural voice without the requirement for keyboard input, Windows 8. 1s universal Bing SmartSearch features are incorporated into Cortana, which replaces the previous Bing Search app which was activated when a user presses the Search button on their device. Cortana includes a music recognition service, Cortana can simulate rolling dice and flipping a coin. Cortanas Concert Watch monitors Bing searches to determine which bands or musicians the user is interested in and it integrates with the Microsoft Band watch band for Windows Phone devices if connected via Bluetooth, it can make reminders and phone notifications. Since the Lumia Denim mobile phone series, launched in October 2014, active listening was added to Cortana, enabling it to be invoked with the phrase, Hey Cortana, it can then be controlled as usual. Some devices from the United Kingdom by O2 have received the Lumia Denim update without the feature but this was clarified as a bug
4.
International Data Group
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International Data Group, Inc. is an American-based media, data and marketing services and venture capital organization. IDG evolved from International Data Corporation which was founded in 1964 in Newtonville, Massachusetts, IDC provides market research and advisory services and is now a subsidiary of IDG. IDG operates in 97 countries and is headquartered in Boston, IDGs brands include CIO, Computerworld, PCWorld and Macworld. IDG produces these and its publications on a national level in each country. IDGs subsidiary IDG World Expo produces large-scale events, such as conventions and these are typically conventions for technology businesses. IDG World Expo runs E for All, Macworld Conference & Expo, IDG also has its own international news agency, IDG News Service. It is headquartered in Boston and has bureaus in cities such as New York, Beijing, Amsterdam and it provides news, images, video and other editorial content to IDGs web sites and print publications worldwide. In 2005, several investors, including IDG, attempted to purchase BlogCN, IDG Books, which was a public company spun off from the privately held IDG, published the popular self-help. For Dummies books. The. For Dummies range was limited to computer related fields. The series is now published by John Wiley & Sons, IDG Books/Hungry Minds — as IDG Books was briefly renamed before being sold to Wiley in 2001 — no longer exists as a separate company. In 2014, the founder and then-owner died, leaving the corporation to the McGovern Foundation, in 2016, the corporation retained Goldman Sachs to explore a possible sale. Also at the time, International Data Group published publications such as Computerworld magazine, on March 29, China Oceanwide Holdings Group announced the close of the acquisition of International Data Group, Inc. IDG Connect, a division of International Data Group, produces, publishes and distributes local IT and business information. Founded in 2006, it has offices in Framingham, Massachusetts, IDG Ventures was founded in 1996. It is a network of venture capital funds with approximately $3.6 billion under management. The IDG Ventures network comprises five independent partnerships managing funds in North America, each partnership makes investments on behalf of its limited partners, including IDG. The latest San Francisco fund, formed in 2007, accepted other institutional investors in addition to IDG, following the successful launch of the San Francisco fund, IDG organized its non-publishing investments in China into venture funds. In 2009, IDG Ventures China renamed itself IDG Capital Partners to reflect the breadth of its half dozen funds encompassing start-up venture through growth investments, in 2000, IDG started a fund in Europe, this fund is now closed
5.
Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system
6.
Windows 7
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Windows 7 is a personal computer operating system developed by Microsoft. It is a part of the Windows NT family of operating systems, Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22,2009, and became generally available on October 22,2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7s server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time, Windows 7 continued improvements on Windows Aero with the addition of a redesigned taskbar that allows applications to be pinned to it, and new window management features. Other new features were added to the system, including libraries, the new file sharing system HomeGroup. A new Action Center interface was added to provide an overview of system security and maintenance information. Windows 7 also shipped with updated versions of several applications, including Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player. Windows 7 was a success for Microsoft, even prior to its official release. Originally, a version of Windows codenamed Blackcomb was planned as the successor to Windows XP, major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. However, an interim, minor release, codenamed Longhorn, was announced for 2003, by the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb. Development of Longhorn was also restarted, and thus delayed, in August 2004, a number of features were cut from Longhorn. Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006, as such, adoption of Vista in comparison to XP remained somewhat low. In July 2007, six months following the release of Vista, it was reported that the next version of Windows would then be codenamed Windows 7. Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that Windows 7 would be more user-centric, Gates later said that Windows 7 would also focus on performance improvements. Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows Vista users migrating to Windows 7 would not find the kind of device compatibility issues they encountered migrating from Windows XP, an estimated 1,000 developers worked on Windows 7. These were broadly divided into core operating system and Windows client experience, in October 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system. The first external release to select Microsoft partners came in January 2008 with Milestone 1, at PDC2008, Microsoft demonstrated Windows 7 with its reworked taskbar. On December 27,2008, the Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet via BitTorrent. According to a performance test by ZDNet, Windows 7 Beta beat both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shutdown time and working with files, such as loading documents
7.
Control Panel (Windows)
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Additional applets can be provided by third party software. The Control Panel has been an inherent part of the Microsoft Windows operating system since Windows 2.0, physically, these applets are stored as. cpl files. For example, the Add or Remove Programs applet is stored under the name appwiz. cpl in the SYSTEM32 folder, many of the individual Control Panel applets can be accessed in other ways. For instance, Display Properties can be accessed by right-clicking on an empty area of the desktop, the classic view consists of shortcuts to the various control panel applets, usually without any description. The categories are seen if the user use Details view, the category view consists of categories, which when clicked on display the control panel applets related to the category. In Windows Vista, the category used applets below the name of the category, the Control Panel can be accessed quickly by typing control in the Run dialog box. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\ControlPanel\Namespace This contains the location of the CLSID variables for all the panels not included as cpl files and these are commonly folders or shell applets, though Windows Vista allows physical programs themselves to be registered as well. The CLSID then allows items such as the icon, infobox and category to be set, the control panel then uses these lists to locate the applets and load them into the control panel program when started by the user. In addition to using the panel, a user can also invoke the applets manually via the command processor. For instance, the syntax Control. exe inetcpl. cpl or control. exe /name Microsoft. InternetOptions will run the internet properties applet in Windows XP or Vista respectively, while both syntax examples are accepted on Windows Vista, only the former one is accepted on Windows XP. These are options in the panel that show devices connected to the computer. They do not actually offer a direct interface to control these devices, such applets include, Scanners and Cameras Game Controllers Portable Media Devices Third-party software vendors have released many applets. Although it is impossible to mention all of them, some of them are listed here, System Preferences – same purpose program on macOS How to run Control Panel tools by typing a command at Microsoft. com
8.
PowerShell
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PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the. NET Framework. Initially a Windows component only, PowerShell was made open-source and cross-platform on 18 August 2016, in PowerShell, administrative tasks are generally performed by cmdlets, which are specialized. NET classes implementing a particular operation. Sets of cmdlets may be combined into scripts, executables, or by instantiating regular. NET classes and these work by accessing data in different data stores, like the file system or registry, which are made available to the PowerShell runtime via PowerShell providers. PowerShell also provides a hosting API with which the PowerShell runtime can be embedded inside other applications and these applications can then use PowerShell functionality to implement certain operations, including those exposed via the graphical interface. Other Microsoft applications including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 also expose their management interface via PowerShell cmdlets, PowerShell includes its own extensive, console-based help, similar to man pages in Unix shells, via the Get-Help cmdlet. Local help contents can be retrieved from the Internet via Update-Help cmdlet, alternatively, help from the web can be acquired on a case-by-case basis via the -online switch to Get-Help. Every released version of Microsoft DOS and Microsoft Windows for personal computers has included a command-line interface tool, the shell is a command line interpreter that supports a few basic commands. For other purposes, a console application must be invoked from the shell. The shell also includes a language, which can be used to automate various tasks. In Windows Server 2003, the situation was improved, but scripting support was considered unsatisfactory. Microsoft attempted to address some of shortcomings by introducing the Windows Script Host in 1998 with Windows 98. It integrates with the Active Script engine and allows scripts to be written in languages, such as JScript and VBScript. Different versions of Windows provided various special-purpose command line interpreters with their own command sets, none of them were integrated with the command shell, nor were they interoperable. By 2002 Microsoft had started to develop a new approach to command line management, the shell and the ideas behind it were published in August 2002 in a white paper titled Monad Manifesto. Monad was to be a new extensible command shell with a design that would be capable of automating a full range of core administrative tasks. Microsoft first showed off Monad at the Professional Development Conference in Los Angeles in October 2003, a private beta program began a few months later which eventually led to a public beta program. Microsoft published the first Monad public beta release on June 17,2005, Beta 2 on September 11,2005, and Beta 3 on January 10,2006. Not much later, on April 25,2006 Microsoft formally announced that Monad had been renamed Windows PowerShell, Release Candidate 1 of PowerShell was released at the same time
9.
Windows Update
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Windows Update, a service offered by Microsoft, provides updates for Windows components. The service provides different kinds of updates, security updates or critical updates protect against vulnerabilities to malware and security exploits. Other updates correct errors unrelated to security, or enhance functionality, Windows Vista and later provide a Control Panel to configure update settings and check for updates. The Windows Update Control Panel also has the function of downloading Windows Ultimate Extras, for previous versions of Microsoft Windows, users can download updates from the Windows Update website, using Internet Explorer. Windows Update was introduced as an Internet web site with the launch of Windows 95, a link to Windows Update on the Start Menu gave access to additional downloads for the operating system. At the time of Windows 98s release, Windows Update offered additional desktop themes, games, device driver updates, fixes to Windows 98 to resolve the Year 2000 problem were distributed using Windows Update in December 1998. Microsoft attributed the success of Windows 98 in part to Windows Update. The first version of the Windows Update web site did not require any personally-identifiable information to be sent to Microsoft, as the number of updates offered by Windows Update grew, this resulted in performance concerns. Arie Slob, writing for the Windows-help. net newsletter in March 2003, noted that the size of the update list had exceeded 400KB, which caused delays of more than a minute for dial-up users. It also narrowed down the list of updates for the operating system and related components by sending details of what operating system version, service pack. German technology web site tecchannel. de published an analysis of the Windows Update communication protocol in February 2003, the check was performed by querying the server for a file, cucif. cab, which contains a list of all the critical updates released for the users operating system. An analysis done by security researcher H. D. Moore in early 1999 was critical of this approach, describing it as horribly inefficient and susceptible to attacks. In a posting to BugTraq, he explained that, every single Windows 98 computer that wishes to get an update has to rely on a single host for the security. If that one server got compromised one day, or an attacker cracks the MS DNS server again, the scope of this attack is big enough to attract crackers who actually know what they are doing. The Critical Update Notification tool continued to be promoted by Microsoft through 1999, initial releases of Windows 2000 shipped with the tool, but Windows 95 and Windows NT4.0 were not supported. It was superseded by Automatic Updates in Windows Me and Windows 2000 SP3, with the release of Windows ME in 2000, Microsoft introduced Automatic Updates as a replacement for the Critical Update Notification tool. Unlike its predecessor, Automatic Updates includes the ability to download, instead of the five-minute schedule used by its predecessor, the Automatic Updates client checks the Windows Update servers once a day. The user is given the option to download available updates then prompt the user to install them, after Windows Me is installed, the user is prompted via a notification balloon to configure the Automatic Updates client
10.
Windows Calculator
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Windows Calculator is a software calculator included in all versions of Windows. A simple arithmetic calculator was first included with Windows 1.0, in Windows 98 and later, it uses an arbitrary-precision arithmetic library, replacing the standard IEEE floating point library. It offers bignum precision for basic operations and 32 digits of precision for advanced operations, the largest value that can be represented on the Windows Calculator is currently <1010,000 and the smallest is 10−9,999. In Windows 2000, digit grouping is added, degree and base settings are added to menu bar. In Windows 7, separate programmer, statistics, unit conversion, date calculation, furthermore, Calculators interface was revamped for the first time since its introduction. The base conversion functions were moved to the mode and statistics functions were moved to the statistics mode. Switching between modes does not preserve the current number, clearing it to 0, in every mode except programmer mode, one can see the history of calculations. The app was redesigned to accommodate multi-touch, standard mode behaves as a simple checkbook calculator, entering the sequence 6 *4 +12 /4 -4 *5 gives the answer 25. In scientific mode, order of operations is followed while doing calculations, in programmer mode, inputting a number in decimal has a lower and upper limit, depending on the data type, and must always be an integer. Data type of number in decimal mode is signed n-bit integer when converting from number in hexadecimal, octal, on the right of the main Calculator, one can add a panel with date calculation, unit conversion and worksheets. Worksheets allow one to calculate a result of a field based on the values of other fields. Pre-defined templates include calculating a cars fuel economy, a lease. In pre-beta versions of Windows 7, Calculator also provided a Wages template, while the traditional Calculator is still included with Windows 8.1, a Metro-style Calculator is also present, featuring a full-screen interface as well as normal, scientific, and conversion modes. The Calculator in Windows 10 is a universal Windows app, the traditional Calculator is still included with Windows 10 LTSB, and it was renamed to win32calc. exe. While the original calc. exe file is present for legacy purposes. By default, Calculator runs in standard mode, which resembles a four-function calculator, Calculator supports keyboard shortcuts, all Calculator features have an associated keyboard shortcut. Calculator in hexadecimal mode cannot accept or display a number larger than 16 hex digits. The largest number it can handle is therefore 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF, any calculations in hex mode which exceed this limit will display a result of zero, even if those calculations would succeed in other modes
