Windows 95 20th Anniversary

edited July 2015 in Software
No I'm not talking about some hackjob from Russia.

It's approaching the 20th anniversary for Windows 95's release and wonder if it will get any attention on the day or turn out to be a fizzer.

Despite being only 10 years old at the time, I still recall the "Start Me Up" commercials on TV and everyone being generally excited about it.

Comments

  • Doubt Microsoft would do anything but a lot of fanboy sites probably will. From I remember the Win95 commercials a lot of people hated them for the fact they got the rolling stones to grant permission on the music.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0AJM6HMYjM
  • Windows 95 really did have some big advances for the time. Despite its flaws, the start menu and task bar were a huge deal. It had built in networking and dead-simple print/file sharing. While it still had the same 16-bit underpinnings as Windows 3.1, it made the 32-bit executable format standard.

    And this was all available on a common desktop OS without needing some expensive workstation or server OS instead.
  • Happy 25th birthday to Windows 95.
  • Anyone recall getting trained up on 95 with Greta?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nbr_OLqTOo

    And this says it all:

    win95_launch_day_vs_windows_8_launch_day.jpg
  • I'm mere months older than Win95, so I'm kinda feeling old :D

    Better fire up a Win95 VM for the good old times (it was the first OS I ever used).

    @thinkpadman: Yeah, that pic isn't surprising. Nowadays, there's digital distribution *cough*moreadvancedpiracy*cough* and I don't think we've seen as drastic an OS improvement than the 3.1 -> 95 transition nor the level of technological popularization Win95 brought. It did simplify computers for the common Joe, but today's level of simplification is just too much.
  • Windows 8 launch was quite because everyone just finally got around to run Windows 7 or still thought XP was alright.

    Win 3.x came out in 92 and instead of calling the next version Windows 4 they gave it the year like name to go with the huge improvements. Come to think of it when Win98 came out much people didn't care. I myself didn't care and was forced to run Win98FE then dual booted Win95 until I was able to score a copy of NT 5 beta 2 and from there went to Win2k when it was released. However, when WinME came out people hated WindowsME with a passion and people even fought stores to get refunds. OEM computer companies released Win2k pro on some home desktops and stores offered to install Win98 or sell you a system with a blank drive. When Vista came out I had bought a HP laptop from Circuit City. I had to fight Circuit City to sell me a laptop with a empty hard drive because like hell I wanted to use bug infested Vista. They offered this with WinME and it was listed in their policy still on opting out on a pre-installed OS on a system. In the end a $500.00 laptop turned into a $398.00 laptop. Windows 7 came out and it was some what of a breath of fresh air but since MS wanted to be nice and let people stick with XP it never really caught on and before you know it Windows 8 came out and a lot of people didn't like and still don't like the "start screen".

    In a nutshell MS has screwed up too many times since Win95 and even pissed off a lot of developers like Valve, id and Bethesda. Even pissed off a lot of end users such as myself. I'll give MS another five or eight years before their pretty much finished and are clinging to their phone/tablet market. This is also why their release party for Windows 8 didn't go well. We're over due for something new.
  • I was 10 year ago went Windows 95 came ago, Windows 95 have improvement over windows 3.1 like the start menu, taskbar, Recycle Bin,
    My Computer, Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer these was Revolutionary at time
  • At the Windows 8 launch, I was tempted to go down to my local computer store (that had set up a large Windows 8 display) and heckle the sales drones about how all the "new" stuff was in Windows 1 or such.

    But yea, after 95 they didn't really add anything that people so desperately needed, unless you count XP switching people to the more stable NT line.
  • I think it's kind of unfortunate the way people treated Windows at that time, including myself. In retrospect, Windows 95 was a phenomenal piece of software, think about how many Win32 APIs were already included in that first version, to the point where many new programs will still run on it! The start button was great, the only thing I hated was those damn open/save dialogs, so tedious. I'm in the process of setting up OSR 2 on an old-ish laptop for some classic 90s windows applications and games.
  • Good old Windows 95. For all its flaws (putting a 32 bit shell on a 16 bit OS was not the best idea), it was a revolutionary piece of software. It was home-oriented, too.

    Windows 8 tried to be 95, but spectacularly failed to do anything that moved computing forward in the way 95 shook the industry.

    Truly one of a kind. I will have to give it a run sometime.
  • Portaller wrote:
    Windows 8 tried to be 95, but spectacularly failed to do anything that moved computing forward in the way 95 shook the industry.

    Windows 8 wasn't trying to be 95. It was trying to be a unifying OS, combining mobile, game console, laptops, tablets, desktops, etc. OS's into one... all running the same interface with the ability to run the same applications.

    The problem is that the same interface doesn't work on every device...
  • BlueSun wrote:
    Portaller wrote:
    Windows 8 tried to be 95, but spectacularly failed to do anything that moved computing forward in the way 95 shook the industry.

    Windows 8 wasn't trying to be 95. It was trying to be a unifying OS, combining mobile, game console, laptops, tablets, desktops, etc. OS's into one... all running the same interface with the ability to run the same applications.

    The problem is that the same interface doesn't work on every device...
    Imo MS is getting better with that with Windows 10 though.
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