Microsoft’s Best Deal (PCGH Retro, July 27)

…1981: It is probably the biggest coup in software history: On July 27, 1981, Microsoft bought all rights to the 86-DOS operating system, also known as QDOS, from the small company Seattle Computer Products for 50,000 US dollars. Microsoft had previously promised computer giant IBM that it would supply an operating system for their forthcoming personal computer, but did not offer one itself. QDOS is a clone of the very popular CP/M system. With minimal changes made at IBM’s request by QDOS developer and new Microsoft employee Tim Paterson, Microsoft later shipped the operating system to IBM, where it was sold as PC-DOS and soon became a smash hit. But Microsoft is also allowed to offer the system itself as MS-DOS and soon sells it to the countless manufacturers of PC replicas. In this way, DOS establishes Microsoft’s position as the largest supplier of operating systems. It takes a few years for IBM to realize that it is not the inventor who has the true power over the PC, but the software supplier.

…1993: The anniversary of the best deal in the company’s history described above seems to be worth something, at least symbolically, because on the same day twelve years later Windows NT 3.1 was released and thus the first Windows to be based on the new technology that gave it its name (NT = New Technology ) is based and cuts off the twelve-year-old DOS braids.

…2006: Intel’s release of the Core 2 Duo series and the resulting departure from the valley of netburst tears deserves a separate article for us.

…2010: On this day, Nvidia announces the Quadro cards based on the Fermi architecture that has just been released into the gamer market. Especially for designers and other users who have to deal with enormously complex models, Fermi quadros with strong geometry are a welcome upgrade – the up to 6 GiByte video memory also help large amounts of data, as they occur in the workstation area, to an enormous performance boost.