Microsoft Pinyin IME
Encyclopedia
Microsoft Pinyin IME is the pinyin
Pinyin method
The pinyin method refers to a family of input methods based on the pinyin method of romanization.In the most basic form, the pinyin method allows a user to input Chinese characters by entering the pinyin of a Chinese character and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with...

 input method
Input method
An input method is an operating system component or program that allows any data, such as keyboard strokes or mouse movements, to be received as input. In this way users can enter characters and symbols not found on their input devices...

 implementation developed by Microsoft and Harbin Institute of Technology
Harbin Institute of Technology
The Harbin Institute of Technology , or HIT, is colloquially known as Hagongda . It is a research university in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, China....

. It is bundled with Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and Chinese editions of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

. Various versions can be downloaded from Microsoft's website with some restrictions.

History

Since Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...

 OSR2, Simplified Chinese edition of Windows automatically installed the bundled Microsoft Pinyin IME. Windows 98 came with version 1.5. The Version 2.0 was released with Microsoft Office 2000
Microsoft Office 2000
Microsoft Office 2000 is a release of Microsoft Office that succeeded Microsoft Office 97 and was designed as a fully 32-bit and Y2K compliant version to match Windows 2000 features. All the Office 2000 applications have OLE 2 capacity, which allows moving data automatically between various...

 and bundled with Windows 2000.

Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...

 and Microsoft Office XP
Microsoft Office XP
Microsoft Office XP is a productivity suite written and distributed by Microsoft for their Windows operating system. Released on March 5, 2001, it is the successor to Office 2000 and the predecessor to Office 2003, and was known as Office 10 in the early stages of its development cycle...

 came with Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0.

Microsoft Pinyin IME 2003 was released with Office 2003. Microsoft Pinyin IME 2003 is later included in Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

. Microsoft Pinyin IME (Ver: 10.1.7600.0) is included in Windows 7.

Microsoft Office Pinyin IME 2007 was released with Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft Office 2007 is a Windows version of the Microsoft Office System, Microsoft's productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 12 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to volume license customers on November 30, 2006 and made available to retail customers on January 30, 2007...

. In 2008, Microsoft released a word list update for this version.

Later versions of the IME came in number of different editions. Usually the Express/Select editions are smaller but feature only common functionalities and the standard word list.

Microsoft Office Pinyin IME 2007 is not supported by 64-bit versions of Windows. The most recent version available for use on 64-bit systems is Microsoft Pinyin IME 4.0, however the final version of Microsoft Office Pinyin IME 2010 does feature full 64-bit support.
Name Version IME version Bundling Official Website/Download
1.0 Windows95 OSR2, Windows NT 4, Office 97
1.5 Windows 98
MS-PinYin98 2.0 7 Windows 2000, Office 2000 Website
Microsoft Pinyin IME 3.0 3.0 8 Windows XP, Office XP Website
Download (Older version)
Download (Newer version)
Microsoft Pinyin IME 2003 4.0 9-10 Windows 7, Windows Vista, Office 2003 Download (Select Edition)(link dead)
Microsoft Office Pinyin IME 2007 12 Office 2007 WebsiteDownload
Microsoft Office Pinyin IME 2010 14 Office 2010 WebsiteDownload

Note: The pinyin method available as part of Microsoft Global IME appears to be a rebundling of version 1.0 for non-Chinese editions of Windows.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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