X-Nico

45 unusual facts about Microsoft windows


ABC notation

Such software is readily available for most computer systems including Microsoft Windows, Unix/Linux, Macintosh, PalmOS, and web-based.

Adobe FreeHand

Development has been discontinued but it is still sold in versions for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

Adobe Type Manager

Adobe ported these products to the Microsoft Windows operating system platform, where they managed font display by patching into Windows (3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, Me) at a very low level.

Altsys

It was published for many years, originally only on the Macintosh, then also for Microsoft Windows.

Analysis of molecular variance

This program, which runs on Windows is called Arlequin, and is freely available on Excoffier's website.

Apple Open Directory

Any Mac OS X Server system prior to 10.7 (Lion) configured as an Open Directory Master can act as a Windows Primary Domain Controller (PDC), providing domain authentication services to Microsoft Windows clients.

Arek Dreyer

He maintains expertise in Microsoft Windows and UNIX based environments, particularly Sun Solaris, Mac OS X has become his preferred platform, and he enjoys the challenge of heterogeneous networks like integration with Active Directory.

Austin M. Allran

In March 2005 Senator Allran called for the game of solitaire to be erased from the Microsoft Windows computers of state employees in his North Carolina constituency, claiming that such a move would save millions of dollars and improve productivity due to the working time lost while state employees play the game.

BTRON

The Desktop PC operating system market is dominated by Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Condusiv Technologies

The company was formerly known as Diskeeper Corporation, a name derived from its flagship product, Diskeeper, a file-system defragmentation software package for Microsoft Windows and OpenVMS.

CSharpBuilder

C#Builder, from Borland Software Corporation, is a computer program that allows programmers to create Microsoft Windows and Web applications for the Microsoft .NET Framework using the programming language C#.

Dōjin soft

They are almost always exclusive to Windows-based PCs, but a few notable exceptions also exist for the Dreamcast, a console on which homebrew development was popular.

FlashCP

This is done through the use of Windows-based software that must be installed in order to use the FlashCP capability of the drive.

Giveaway of the Day

Giveaway of the Day (often abbreviated GOTD) is a website that offers commercially licensed Windows (and occasionally Mac) software for free without software updates or technical support.

Home of the Underdogs

While a majority of games available on the site were for DOS or Microsoft Windows, the site also contained a section with games for other platforms.

HomeRF

The group was disbanded in January 2003 after other wireless networks became accessible to home users and Microsoft began including support for them in its Windows operating systems.

Igor Engraver

Igor Engraver is a music notation program, published by the Swedish company NoteHeads, produced for the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

InterVideo WinDVR

InterVideo WinDVR was a commercial digital video recorder (DVR) software package for Windows operating systems.

Lapsiporno.info

Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFI) have noticed that the blacklist includes non-pornographic websites also, including a Windows advice forum, a computer repair service and the Internet Initiative Japan server nn.iij4u.or.jp that, among others, hosts websites for a violin factory, a doll store and a hearing aid manufacturer.

Lotus DataLens

Lotus also released two user-oriented query builders, the DOS-based Query Builder which could interact with DataLens sources but was not built on it, and the Windows-based Data Query Assistant (DQA) which was built directly on DataLens.

Mike Muuss

Due to its usefulness, ping has been implemented on a large number of operating systems, initially BSD Unix, but later others including Windows and Mac OS X.

MusiCAD

Version 2.0 added support for multivoice score editing, and the 3.0 version is available for Microsoft Windows and in English.

NetBackup

It provides cross-platform backup functionality to a large variety of Windows, UNIX and Linux operating systems.

Norton PC Checkup

Norton PC Checkup is a program downloaded either separately or as a bundle with updates to Adobe Flash, provided to enable users to perform a system checkup of their Microsoft Windows based personal computers.

O RLY?

In 2006, anti-virus company Sophos discovered a computer worm known as "W32/Hoots-A", which sends a graphical image of a snowy owl with the letters "O RLY?" to a print queue when it infects a Windows-based computer.

OpenCodecs

OpenCodecs is a software package for enabling HTML5 video on Microsoft Windows, particularly using the Theora and WebM codecs in Internet Explorer.

OutSPOKEN

outSPOKEN for Microsoft Windows was released in 1994 for Windows 3.1, and was widely recognized as one of the first truly effective screen readers for Windows.

P0sixspwn

p0sixspwn is a jailbreak tool for Mac OS X and Windows to jailbreak iOS 6.1.3 - 6.1.5 untethered on all devices, except Apple TV 3G.

Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol

All releases of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 OSR2 are bundled with a PPTP client, although they are limited to only 2 concurrent outbound connections.

PwnageTool

Although PwnageTool is only for Mac OS X, a Microsoft Windows version called WinPwn was developed but is now retired.

Richard T. Russell

Richard Thomas Russell is the creator of the BBC BASIC for Windows programming language and the author of the Z80 and MS-DOS versions of BBC BASIC.

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In addition to creating BBC BASIC for Windows, Russell also runs a Yahoo! support group for the language to which he regularly contributes tips, advice and comments on other users' code.

Rua 25 de Março

A person who shops here also runs the risk of getting caught by the government, though the dangers are quite low unless it is a foreigner bringing illegal goods back into their developed country, such as illegal electronics and software like Microsoft Windows, among other things.

Segmentation fault

On Microsoft Windows, the offending process receives a STATUS ACCESS VIOLATION exception.

Server Interface Pod

Many of Dell's KVM switches are IP enabled, allowing users to remote control servers with a Linux or Microsoft Windows client.

ServersCheck

It can perform traditional network related checks (TCP, PING, traceroute) but can also be used to monitor a wide variety of other checks such as internet related checks (url, email chain, database checks, Windows checks (diskspace, CPU, memory, process, services).

Shift JIS art

Unlike Western ASCII art, which is generally designed to be viewed with a monospaced font, Shift JIS art is designed around the proportional-width MS PGothic font supplied with Microsoft Windows, which is the default font for web sites in Japanese versions of Windows.

Spam email delivery

Most of the major Windows e-mail viruses of 2003, including the Sobig and Mimail virus families, functioned as spammer viruses: viruses designed expressly to make infected computers available as spamming tools.

Spy Fox

When running with ScummVM, these games can be played on different operating systems, including Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux.

Starfield

3D Starfield, an effect simulating forward movement through Outer space amidst a field of stars; included as a screensaver with some versions of Microsoft Windows

Survex

It is designed to be portable and can be run on a variety of platforms, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix.

TeX

TeXShop for Apple Mac OS X, TeXworks for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and MS Windows, and WinShell for MS Windows are similar tools and provide an integrated development environment (IDE) for working with LaTeX or TeX.

Turbo C++

Turbo C++ 3.0 was released in 1991 (shipping on November 20), and came in amidst expectations of the coming release of Turbo C++ for Microsoft Windows.

VistaPro

The PC version runs in MS-DOS for the earlier versions and from 4.00 onwards it runs on all versions of 32-bit Microsoft Windows.

Yuen Poovarawan

The Microcomputer Research Laboratory, which Yuen was head of, also developed the Thai Kernel System, a hardware-independent system designed to promote system-intercompatibility for Thai-language application development, in 1990, but this failed to gain a user base as it lost ground to the expanding Microsoft Windows systems.


4oD

The service was originally available as a Windows-only desktop program for downloading shows similar to BBC iPlayer Desktop.

Alexei Shulgin

Particularly involved with software art and internet art, he is a part of the readme culture, and is probably most well known for his ongoing so called "386DX" performances, in which he manipulates an antiquated computer with Microsoft Windows version 3.1 and an Intel 386 processor to perform MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) renditions of popular music hits while a synthesized text-to-speech voice "sings" the lyrics.

AVADirect

They specialize in highly customized computer systems including Microsoft Windows and Linux servers, high-end workstations and gaming systems, business PCs, and notebooks.

Borland Reflex

As a testament to properly written software, one can still run Reflex on any modern Windows-based PC.

British and Malaysian English differences

Most computer software in Malaysia including Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office come pre-set with English (United States) as the default and these settings are seldom changed to English (United Kingdom) resulting in the proliferation of American English in many places of work, local universities and other places with heavy reliance on documents and content created by using computers.

Control-V

In many GUI environments, including Microsoft Windows and most desktop environments based on the X Window System, and in applications such as word processing software running in those environments, control-V can be used to paste text or other content (if supported) from the clipboard at the current cursor position.

Corel Linux

SmartMove looks for existing Microsoft Windows installations on the machine, looks a little further for individual users, and offers to transfer application settings to analogous programs under Linux.

DarkSpace

2.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4/AMD Sempron Processor, Windows XP/Vista/7, Dedicated graphics card (Nvidia GeForce 9500GT / AMD/ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series or better), 1 GB of RAM (2 GB for Vista/7), 200 MB free hard drive space, Broadband internet connection, Direct Input compatible mouse, DirectX 9.0c or higher.

Dartmouth Time Sharing System

In 2000 a project to recreate the DTSS system on a simulator was undertaken and as a result DTSS is now available for Microsoft Windows systems and for the Apple Macintosh computer.

Den Store Danske Encyklopædi

The text of the paper encyclopedia was also published, but without illustrations, on CD-ROMs for Microsoft Windows in 2004 and for Mac OS in 2005.

Dilbert's Desktop Games

Dilbert's Desktop Games is a collection of Dilbert-related games for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, 98SE, & Millennium Edition.

Dirt: Showdown

Dirt: Showdown (stylised as DiRT: Showdown) is a video game published and developed by Codemasters for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Dune II

Dune II also led to direct sequels: Westwood released a semi-remake for Windows in 1998 as Dune 2000, along with a PlayStation port in the same year.

Final Scratch

Stanton claims that the ScratchAmp can now interact with any audio software through ASIO or WDM on Windows, and CoreAudio in Mac OS X.

GNU toolchain

Parts of the GNU toolchain are also directly used with or ported to other platforms such as Solaris, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows (via Cygwin and MinGW/MSYS) and Sony PlayStation 3.

Go!Zilla

Zilla (not to be confused with Godzilla, a fictional Japanese monster) is a proprietary download manager originally developed by Aaron Ostler in 1995, and later purchased by Radiate in 1999, for use on Windows.

High-speed multimedia radio

This method is supported by all modern operating systems including but not limited to Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, and Linux.

IBM mainframe

There are software-based emulators for the System/370, System/390, and System z hardware, including FLEX-ES and the freely available Hercules emulator which runs under Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

IWARP

Networking services implemented over iWARP include those offered in the OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution (OFED) by the OpenFabrics Alliance for Linux operating systems, and the Winsock Direct protocol for Microsoft Windows.

Karbar

Its articles, aimed at all levels of user, cover applications, programming, operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc.), graphics, animation, software, hardware, internet and games.

Language Interface Pack

Unlike MUI packs which are available only to Microsoft volume license customers and for select SKUs of Windows Vista, a Language Interface Pack is available freely and can be installed on a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows or Office and a fixed base language.

Lantastic

LANtastic was a peer-to-peer local area network (LAN) operating system for DOS, Microsoft Windows, Novell NetWare and OS/2.

MicroStation

The latest versions of the software are released solely for Microsoft Windows operating systems, but historically MicroStation was available for Macintosh platforms and a number of Unix-like operating systems.

Mosaic notation program

Several factors can be theorized: Sibelius and Finale were the competitor notation packages; they were developed for both Macintosh and Windows platforms.

MyFax

Some of the features of MyFax include the ability to send and receive faxes by email and through the internet, as well as send faxes directly from Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Windows-based applications including Google Docs, OpenOffice.org, and Intuit QuickBooks.

Netpbm

It is included in all major open source Unix-like operating system distributions and also works on other Unix-like operating systems, Windows, Mac OS X, and other platforms.

NO$GBA

NO$GBA (pronounced "no cash GBA") is a free Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance emulator for Microsoft Windows & DOS.

Pactos

Pactos sells a DOS-based package program called Navid 3, and also a Windows-based package program called Navid 4; both Navid programs are intended to enable blind and partially sighted people to use computers.

PC Format

Despite the occasional mention of alternatives, PC Format takes the term 'PC' to mean a Microsoft Windows-based computer.

Pragmatic General Multicast

It is not yet a standard, but has been implemented in some networking devices and operating systems, including Windows XP and later versions of Microsoft Windows, as well as in third-party libraries for Linux, Windows and Solaris.

Program information file

TopView was the originator of PIFs which were inherited and extended by DESQview and Microsoft Windows, where they are most often seen.

PRONOM

Unix magic numbers and Macintosh data forks do provide some of this functionality, but the same is not true within DOS or Microsoft Windows environments.

RobotWar

RoboWar is a similar game that was released later on the Macintosh, and is now available for both Mac OS and Windows.

Scivelation

Scivelation (previously known as Salvation) is a third-person shooter being developed by Ukrainian developer Black Wing Foundation for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Sibelius Software

All of the company's software is now available for both the Windows and Macintosh platforms.

SolidWorks

SolidWorks is a 3D mechanical CAD (computer-aided design) program that runs on Microsoft Windows and is being developed by Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp., a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, S. A. (Vélizy, France).

Text box

Pressing Home/End keys (Microsoft's Windows OS) or Command-left arrow/Command-right arrow (Apple's Mac OS) moves the caret to the beginning/end of the line;

Van Wolverton

Wolverton has written other computer books, addressing MS-DOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows, WordPerfect, Netscape FastTrack, VisiCalc, QBasic and more.

Web interoperability

Web interoperability means producing web pages viewable in standard compatible web browsers, various operating systems such as Windows, Macintosh and Linux and devices such as PC, PDA and mobile phone based on the latest web standards.

X Window System

Microsoft Windows is not shipped with support for X, but many third-party implementations exist, as free and open source software such as Cygwin/X, and proprietary products such as Exceed, MKS X/Server, Reflection X, X-Win32 and Xming.

Xuedong Huang

From 2000 to 2004, Huang served as general manager of Microsoft's Speech Platforms Group, where he led both the business and engineering teams that shipped Microsoft Speech Server and other voice technologies used in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Windows Mobile and Microsoft Exchange Server.