Windows

About Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows (or simply Windows) is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of several families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g. Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE) or Windows Server. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x and Windows Mobile.

Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984.

Consider an Alternative OS

Many times people find themselves laden with viruses, bloatware, and just general frustration with their Windows computers. One thing to think about is to dump Windows altogether^* and go to a free or semi-free operating system. A clean reinstall of a Linux variant may cause a seemingly-old laptop to feel 'like new' again. We will gladly help you with this and the software costs will be nothing.

* You may not have a choice: As of 20/09/2023, the long standing free upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.x to Windows 10 has officially ended. It is not known how this will affect reinstalling Windows on PCs previously upgraded.

Getting Help

Most of us have quite a bit of exposure to Windows at one time or another. People normally have encountered issues with Windows so most of us at RML should be capable of helping fix things in Windows.