> it came with an embedded windows runtime - I think it was Microsoft not sure quite yet how they'd license it.

The Windows port of Microsoft Excel also initially came bundled with a Windows runtime. It wasn't really until Windows 3.0 that you could start take Windows as a prereq. Before then, very few systems had Windows installed.

Wait a minute. "Windows Runtime" has a different meaning nowadays. Microsoft is really reusing a lot of its existing trademarks for Windows 8, isn't it? "Surface" was also a trademark that they already owned, for a giant touchscreen table.