Wintel
Proper noun
Meaning
Wintel
(informal) The popular computing environment of the Microsoft Windows operating system running on an Intel CPU.
Anagrams
Examples
A modern Wintel -compatible computer provides a setup routine essentially unchanged in nature from the ROM-resident BIOS setup utilities of the late 1990s; the user can configure hardware options using the keyboard and video display.
CEO Pfeiffer boldly predicted that the Microsoft Intel "Wintel" duopoly would be replaced by "Wintelpaq".
Instead of battery-backed RAM, the modern Wintel machine may store the BIOS configuration settings in flash ROM, perhaps the same flash ROM that holds the BIOS itself.
Through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodity Wintel machines began to erode SGI's stronghold in the 3D market.
This meant that if a developer made their software only for the Wintel platform, they would still be able to reach the vast majority of computer users.
Today's Macintosh computers share the same system architecture as their Wintel counterparts and can boot Microsoft Windows.