MS-DOS Editor, commonly just called edit, is a character-based text editor that comes with MS-DOS (since version 5) and 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows. It superseded edlin, the standard editor in earlier versions.

Until MS-DOS 6.22 it was actually QBasic running in editor mode, but from DOS 7 (Windows 95) QBasic was removed and MS-DOS Editor became a standalone program.

Editor is sometimes used as a substitute for Notepad on Windows 9x, where Notepad is limited to small files only. Editor can edit files that are up to 65,279 lines and up to approximately 5 MB in size. MS-DOS versions are limited to approximately 300 kB, depending on how much conventional memory is free. Editor can be launched by typing it into the Run command dialog on Windows, and by typing edit into the command-line interface. Edit is still included in later versions of Windows such as Windows XP, Windows Vista 32 bit, Windows 7 32 bit, and Windows 8 32 bit. Being a 16-bit DOS application, it won't directly run on 64-bit Windows versions.

MS-DOS (/ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/ EM-es-DOSS; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid-1990s, when it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system by Microsoft Corporation.

MS-DOS resulted from a request in 1981 by IBM for an operating system to use in its IBM PC range of personal computers. Microsoft quickly bought the rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, and began work on modifying it to meet IBM's specification. IBM licensed and released it in August 1981 as PC DOS 1.0 for use in their PCs. Although MS-DOS and PC DOS were initially developed in parallel by Microsoft and IBM, in subsequent years the two products diverged and became different from each other, with recognizable differences in compatibility, syntax, and capabilities.

MS-DOS 4.0 was a multitasking release of MS-DOS developed by Microsoft based on MS-DOS 3.1. Lack of interest from OEMs, particularly IBM, led to it being released only in a scaled-back form. It is sometimes referred to as European MS-DOS 4.0, as it was primarily used there. It should not be confused with PC DOS 4.00 or MS-DOS 4.01 and later, which did not contain the multi-tasking features.

History

Apricot Computers pre-announced "MS-DOS 4.0" in early 1986, and Microsoft demonstrated it in September of that year at a Paris trade show. However, only a few European OEMs, such as SMT Goupil and International Computers Limited (ICL), actually licensed releases of the software. In particular, IBM declined the product, concentrating instead on improvements to MS-DOS 3.x and their new joint development with Microsoft to produce OS/2.

As a result, the project was scaled back, and only those features promised to particular OEMs were delivered. In September 1987, a version of multi-tasking MS-DOS 4.1 was reported to be developed for the ICL DRS Professional Workstation (PWS). No further releases were made once the contracts had been fulfilled.

Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows ME (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me", but commonly pronounced as an initialism, "M-E"), is a graphical operating system from Microsoft released to manufacturing in June 2000, and launched in September 2000. It was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series.

Windows ME was the successor to Windows 98 SE and was targeted specifically at home PC users. It included Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows Media Player 7, and the new Windows Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy to use for home users. Microsoft also updated the graphical user interface, shell features, and Windows Explorer in Windows ME with some of those first introduced in Windows 2000, which had been released as a business-oriented operating system seven months earlier. Windows ME could be upgraded to Internet Explorer 6 SP1 (but not to SP2 (SV1) or Internet Explorer 7), Outlook Express 6 SP1 and Windows Media Player 9 Series. Microsoft .NET Framework up to and including version 2.0 is supported; however, versions 2.0 SP1, 3.x, and greater are not. Office XP was the last version of Microsoft Office to be compatible with Windows ME.