Windows

1. Plural of "window," a glass enclosure in a wall permitting viewing of the surroundings outside of a building. 2. Operating system created for personal computers by Bill Gates and the team at Microsoft beginning in the 1980s as a graphical shell over their hugely successful MS-DOS operating system. Lambasted over the years for perceived inefficiency and insecurity that more often than not is the error of the operator, although some holes have been found and patched. Now compatible with Macintosh computers bearing Intel processors thanks to Apple's Boot Camp. Has come to the computing public in several iterations beginning with Windows 1.0 in 1985, and the most recent iteration is Windows Vista, already available to enterprise customers and set to be released to the public in January '07. In the community, sources of lambasting are primarily Macintosh and Linux users, and sources of defense are primarily other Windows users. Has been criticized for being the OS of choice for computer manufacturers and for "stealing" features from other operating systems.