Windows Basics: All About Windows

Lesson 1: All About Windows

All about Windows

Windows is an operating system designed by Microsoft. The operating system is what allows you to use a computer. Windows comes preloaded on most new personal computers (PCs), which helps to make it the most popular operating system in the world.

Windows makes it possible to complete all types of everyday tasks on your computer. For example, you can use Windows to browse the Internet, check your email, edit digital photos, listen to music, play games, and do much more.

Windows is also used in many offices because it gives you access to productivity tools such as calendars, word processors, and spreadsheets.

Microsoft released the first version of Windows in the mid-1980s. There have been many versions of Windows since then, but the most recent ones include Windows 10 (released in 2015), Windows 8 (2012), Windows 7 (2009), Windows Vista (2007), and Windows XP (2001).

About this tutorial

This tutorial is designed to show you the absolute basics of using a Windows computer, including how to use the desktop, how to open different files and applications, and how to move and resize windows. The information in this tutorial will apply to more recent versions of Windows, including the ones mentioned above. However, once you've learned the basics, you may also want to review one of our version-specific Windows tutorials. Just select the version of Windows that's installed on your computer:

Windows 8 vs. other versions

While most versions of Windows are relatively similar, Windows 8 works very differently from other versions. However, if you have Windows 8 on your computer, you should now be able to upgrade to Windows 10, which is more similar to earlier versions, including Windows 7. We recommend upgrading your computer to Windows 10 if you can. Review our Windows 10 tutorial to learn how.

However, we'll still point out any major differences between Windows 8 and other versions, which means you'll see some Windows 8-specific information from time to time. If your computer uses Windows 8, you'll want to review both this tutorial and our Windows 8 tutorial to learn more about the differences.

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Today, we learn to make window panes. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

We've made glass in many forms for about 4500 years. But two features of glassmaking are surprising. First, glassmaking processes have been far harder to invent than we imagine. The second surprise is that artisans could make really fine glass tableware long before they could make a good windowpane.

The ancient Egyptians and Greeks made crude glass decorations. But today's basic soda-lime glass -- made of sand, limestone, and sodium carbonate -- is far more recent. The first glass of any real quality was made in Hellenistic North Africa around 300 BC. Soda-lime glass came quickly on its heels. Both Hellenistic artisans and the Romans who followed them made fine glass tableware. Tableware remained the most common glass product for a long time.

The stained glass art of the Gothic cathedral was so highly developed that we might think glass handling had reached high perfection at that point. Actually, what had reached a perfection that seems to be beyond our reach today was coloring the glass. A medieval window admitted light, but it was seldom smooth enough to provide a clear view. Cathedral windows did not even try to offer any view of the outside world. What they did so beautifully was to offer illuminated bible stories to the faithful who, for the most part, didn't read.

Medieval glassblowers made two kinds of flat glass sheets. One technique was to blow a large cylinder. They then cut the cylinder open and flattened it out while it was still hot. The other flat glass sheet was called crown glass. They made it by spinning molten glass and letting centrifugal forces spread it from a central point. Crown glass was the most common flat glass for a long time. It underwent considerable refinement. But, even as late as 1800, most domestic windows still displayed a characteristic umbilical imperfection called a crown at their centers.

The French developed the superior plate glass process in the latter 18th century. First a plate glass is poured out in a mold. Then the glass needs expensive grinding and polishing.

To provide common people -- you and me -- with good domestic windowpanes required a continuous mechanized process. Molten glass had to be rolled out in smooth continuous sheets. That couldn't be done until we had modern process machinery. It was in the early 1800s that the first inexpensive rolled window glass became available. That was little over a century and a half ago.

The lowly windowpane reminds us how we take yesterday's great acts of inventive genius for granted. Windowpanes are the result of terribly complex high-temperature chemical and mechanical processes. Yet few things give our daily lives the soul-settling grace of these unobtrusive bridges to the outer world -- this technology which is at its best when it is completely invisible.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

(Theme music)

You'll find one of the best accounts of the history of glass and glass-making in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. This episode is a revised version of Episode 38.

For an example of Egyptian sand-soda-lime glass from the Hellenistic period click on the image below. (From the holdings of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.)

Typical 19th-century crown-glass-making operation
From the 1832 Edinburgh Encyclopaedia