The history of Microsoft’s flagship operating system (OS) includes all of that and so much more. Over the past 35 years, the Windows operating system has been through many reinventions.

A Visual History of Windows. Over its 40 years, PCMag has covered every version of Microsoft's operating system. Like you, sometimes we loved it, and sometimes we didn't.

In honor of Microsoft's 50th anniversary, we've ranked the best Windows consumer operating systems Microsoft has ever shipped, in order from worst to best.

The issues that stymied Windows 1.0 when Microsoft was young won’t necessarily block today’s operating system from success, not when every major computer company is churning out compatible ...

Windows 95 also implemented big changes to the operating system core, including a move from 16-bit to 32-bit architecture and preemptive multitasking. Of course, server versions of Windows were ...