Computer World: Operating Systems

Windows 8's user share in October climbed past the 10% milestone for the first time since the launch of the radically-overhauled OS a year ago, an analytics company said Friday.

The operating system's share of all computing devices running Windows, a tally that included Windows 8.1, rose to 10.2% in October, according to California-based metrics company Net Applications.

Yet the gain, just fourth-tenths of a percentage point, was sluggish compared to past advances, and represented only half the monthly average over the last 12 months and a third of the increase of September alone.

The slower increase signaled that the OS took a breather in its uptake race, most likely caused by the one-two punch of the end of back-to-school sales in September, and a pause in purchases as buyers awaited new hardware with Windows 8.1 and the higher-than-usual discounts many experts believe will mark this year's holidays.

Continuing coverage: Windows 8

Within the broader category of Windows 8, the 2012 version's share fell for the first time as Windows 8.1 -- the free update that debuted two weeks ago -- accounted for nearly a fifth of the total 10%.

Windows 8 also increased its lead over Windows Vista, the 2007 edition that has been labeled one of Microsoft's rare flops. When each OS's share was compared 12 months after launch. Vista accounted for 8.2% of all Windows PCs, two points under Windows 8's. However, Microsoft's newest operating system remained far behind Windows 7 atits 12-month-after-launch mark, when the latter powered 20.1% of all Windows systems.

The next two months will be important in gauging Windows 8/8.1's performance. While some analysts remain cautiously optimistic that the turn to Windows 8.1 and new device designs -- including Microsoft's recent refresh of its Surface tablets -- will reverse the six-quarter industry contraction and revive Windows fortunes in the critical holiday selling season, Microsoft itself was less certain.

"In [Devices and Consumer] Licensing, we expect revenue to be $5.2 billion to $5.4 billion," Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said two weeks ago, as she spelled out the company's guidance for the fourth quarter to Wall Street. "We expect the business PC market to be stable; however, the consumer PC market is subject to more volatility."

For the fourth quarter of 2012, Microsoft recorded $5.7 billion in revenue for the Devices and Consumer division's Licensing group, where sales of Windows to computer makers are logged. Hood's guidance, then, means Microsoft anticipates a 5% to 9% year-over-year downturn in Licensing's revenue for the quarter ending Dec. 31.

While Windows 8 grew only slightly -- and Windows 7 stayed flat -- Windows XP's march to retirement decelerated last month. The connection was not a surprise, since most consumers and businesses replace XP not by upgrading in place, but with new hardware and thus new operating systems.

The aged OS lost just one-tenth of a percentage point of share, falling to 34.5% of all Windows machines, at least temporarily delaying the mass migrations some expect before next April, when the 12-year-old OS stops receiving security updates.

In August and September, XP shed six percentage points, a record two-month decline.

Last week, Microsoft again beat the XP drum, citing data from its malware cleaning tools to claim that customers who don't dump the OS before it's retired face a 66% increase in attack code infections.

Windows 7, the business-standard replacement for XP, powered an estimated 51.2% of all Windows systems in October, Net Applications said. Meanwhile, Microsoft recently pegged Windows 7's share in the enterprise at a significantly higher 75%.

Windows continued to run the vast majority of personal computers -- 90.7% -- last month, but Apple's OS X ended October with a 7.7% user share, or about 1 out of every 13 systems worldwide, a new record. Linux finished October flat at 1.6%.

Net Applications measures operating system user share by tracking unique visitors to approximately 40,000 sites that rely on its traffic analytics software.

Invention Of Computer:-

The first Analytical Engine for general purpose digital computer was made by Charles Babbage in 1883. He was a mathematician . The actual Implementation of that Engine was achieved in 1943 when Harvard Mark 1 was build.

Analytical Engine :-
The Analytical Engine was a programmable digital plus mechanical machine which could do calculation and based on the the previews calculation could make any decision
and could work like that the generals computers can do now a days.It had Input ,processor,memory and output.As it was a mechanical machine so all the things were done by the man's power.

Ada Lovelace :-

She was a student of Charles Babbage. She wrote her first program for Babbage's Engine.She was the first Programmer and on the behalf of that Ada Language was named on the name of Ada Lovelace by US Department of Defense .This language was specifically for Us military.

Turing Machine:-

Introduced by Alan Turing in 1936, Turing machines are one of the key abstractions used in modern computability theory, the study of what computers can and cannot do.
A Turing machine is a particularly simple kind of computer, one whose operations are limited to reading and writing symbol son a tape, or moving along the tape to the left
or right. The tape is marked off into squares, each of which can be filled with at most one symbol. At any given point in its operation, the Turing machine can only read or write on one of these squares, the square located directly below its "read/write" head.

The Turing test:-

A test proposed to determine if a computer has the ability to think. In 1950, Alan Turing (Turing, 1950) proposed a method for determining if machines can think. This method is known as The Turing Test. The test is conducted with two people and a machine. One person plays the role of an interrogator and is in a separate room from the machine and the other person. The interrogator only knows the person and machine as A and B. The interrogator does not know which the person is and which the machine is.Using a teletype, the interrogator, can ask A and B any question he/she wishes. The aim of the interrogator is to determine which the person is and which the machine is.The aim of the machine is to fool the interrogator into thinking that it is a person. If the machine succeeds then we can conclude that machines can think.

Vacuum:-

A vacuum tube is just that: a glass tube surrounding a vacuum (an area from which all gases has been removed). What makes it interesting is that when electrical contacts are put on the ends, you can get a current to flow though that vacuum.
A British scientist named John A. Fleming made a vacuum tube known today as a diode. Then the diode was known as a "valve,"

ABC:-

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer. It was built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937-42. It incorporated several major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions.

Harvard Mark 1:-

Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper designed the MARK series of computers at Harvard University. The MARK series of computers began with the Mark I in 1944. Imagine a giant roomful of noisy, clicking metal parts, 55 feet long and 8 feet high. The 5-ton device contained almost 760,000 separate pieces. Used by the US Navy for gunnery and ballistic calculations, the Mark I was in operation until 1959. The computer, controlled by pre-punched paper tape, could carry out addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and reference to previous results. It had special subroutines for logarithms and trigonometric functions and used 23 decimal place numbers. Data was stored and counted mechanically using 3000 decimal storage wheels, 1400 rotary dial switches, and 500 miles of wire. Its electromagnetic relays classified the machine as a relay computer. All output was displayed on an electric typewriter. By today's standards, the Mark I was slow, requiring 3-5 seconds for a multiplication operation

ENIAC:-

ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator). The U.S. military sponsored their research,they needed a calculating device for writing artillery-firing tables (the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy). John Mauchly was the chief consultant and J Presper Eckert was the chief engineer. Eckert was a graduate student studying at the Moore School when he met John Mauchly in 1943. It took the team about one year to design the ENIAC and 18 months and 500,000 tax dollars to build it. The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors and 10,000 capacitors.

Transistor:-

The first transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories on December 16, 1947 by William Shockley. This was perhaps the most important electronics event of the 20th century, as it later made possible the integrated circuit and microprocessor that are the basis of modern electronics. Prior to the transistor the only alternative to its current regulation and switching functions (TRANSfer resISTOR) was the vacuum tubes, which could only be miniaturized to a certain extent, and wasted a lot of energy in the form of heat.
Compared to vacuum tubes, it offered:
1->smaller size
2->better reliability
3->lower power consumption
4->lower cost

UNIVAC 1:-

The first commercially successful electronic computer, UNIVAC I, was also the first general purpose computer - designed to handle both numeric and textual information. It was designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. The implementation of this machine marked the real beginning of the computer era. Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC machine to the U.S. Bureau of Census in 1951. This machine used magnetic tape for input.
First successful commercial computer design was derived from the ENIAC (same developers)
first client = U.S. Bureau of the Census
$1 million
48 systems built

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Saturday, 9 November 2013

Windows 8 uptake slows, ditch-XP movement decelerates

Introduction To Computers