Trivia Tuesday: Windows 95's golden days

[Neowin]

Do you remember Windows 95? I’m sure that many of you do, and even though I was quite young when I first experienced it, I’m sure that it was the first operating system I had ever used. It was a marvel of graphic user interfaces and functionality at the time, and made Microsoft a boatload of money as well.

Did you know that Windows 95 had a beta program? Yep, users could pay to enter the Windows 95 Preview Program in the United States and they would receive a few 3.5” floppy disks containing the beta OS. It only cost $19.95, or around $30 now adjusted for inflation.

Reminder: Windows 95 was released on August 24, 1995. As of December 31, 2001 it is unsupported by Microsoft.

System requirements for Windows 95 are at least a 12 MHz Intel 80386 CPU, 4 MB of RAM and 50 MB of HDD space. Of course, Microsoft recommends that you use 8 MB of RAM for optimal performance. Windows 95 cannot support more than 480 MB of RAM or hard drives larger than 2 GB; luckily for 1995 this would have been huge.

The iconic plain-color Windows 95 desktop (with Internet Explorer).

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https://www.techspot.com/news/47590-trivia-tuesday-windows-95s-golden-days.html

 

[Guest]

95 was the buisness back in the cut and I remember it fondly. Ahh the fun I had playin pinball and solitaire for hours between pr0n searches. lol

 

[rvnwlfdroid]

lol... Is anyone still running Windows for Workgroups 3.1 on any machines? This article is rather funny. I recently setup a bunch of virtual machines and have been trying to get 3.1 working correctly. It brings back memories playing with the older OS?s.

 

[lipe123]

I worked for a company that had a Windows 3.1 server thing for some time clock program or something and they were serious believers of "If it ain't broke..." (this was around 1998!)
Drove me nuts since I just came out of college and expected to enter the ultra modern work environment!

There was a Windows 95B patch a while after release that was much better than the original release, don't forget to mention that!

 

[Guest]

Looking @ that screenshot, the 1st thing that popped into my mind was that the icons and start button NEVER looked better.

 

[TomSEA]

I remember when this came out. I was laughing at it because it couldn't do half of what my old Amiga 500 (discontinued in 91) could.

 

[rvnwlfdroid]

A bit off topic but is it just me or does microsoft have a track record or every other OS being decent? 95 vs 98se, Mill vs XP, Vista vs Win7. The world is their testing ground. :|

 

[Mindwraith]

rvnwlfdroid said:
A bit off topic but is it just me or does microsoft have a track record or every other OS being decent? 95 vs 98se, Mill vs XP, Vista vs Win7. The world is their testing ground. :|

I think it's more of a mental aspect of the consumers. Whenever they make a big change, we don't like it until the 2nd rendition when we get used to it.

 

[Guest]

I remember when this first came out, I stopped by Best Buy and they had a demo going. I took one look at it and said, 'Gee, looks like a Mac.' The salesperson looked exaperated, like he'd heard it one too many times. =)

 

[The5Xfactor]

Guest said:
I remember when this first came out, I stopped by Best Buy and they had a demo going. I took one look at it and said, 'Gee, looks like a Mac.' The salesperson looked exaperated, like he'd heard it one too many times. =)

They actually gave free full copies to employees of BestBuy!!! I envied my friend who worked there, until I received my free copy just by attending Microsoft WIn95 Launch Seminar!

 

[killeriii]

Mindwraith said:

rvnwlfdroid said:
A bit off topic but is it just me or does microsoft have a track record or every other OS being decent? 95 vs 98se, Mill vs XP, Vista vs Win7. The world is their testing ground. :|

I think it's more of a mental aspect of the consumers. Whenever they make a big change, we don't like it until the 2nd rendition when we get used to it.

It's more than that. For example, I remember setting up internet on win95. It was agony. Millennium couldn't run for 10 minutes without crashing. And Vista had poor driver support. All problems that were directly fixed in the following OS.

 

[EEatGDL]

2 GB of HDD? I had an IBM with W 95 Plus! and a HDD of 3 GB, I just conserve the shell [case] with the label of the system specifications, what I remember now 'cause I'm not going to look for it because I'm lazy is that it had an AMD K6 and ATI [don't remember either model or memory]. If anyone is interested in the details I'll post it later. I'm not sure if the Plus! extended its capabilities.

 

[spydercanopus]

I still have a Win95 laptop that runs DooM and a Zelda emulator. It also had a trackball, something I think should be re-introduced. They're so much better than a touchpad because there is no edge.

 

[Guest]

still remember the first time i ran win 95 on my ultra-modern 386DX at 20mhz and RAM 8 mb

 

[stan4]

Of course I remember w95, it started in the blink of an eye, even running on a 486 DX2 at 66 Mhz with 8 Megs of RAM, and a 500 Megabytes HDD; and playing DUKE NUKEM 3D, lol, the coolest was that I assembled it from spares in 2003, truly the poor guy's PC.