What did people do when Windows 95 came out?

[Rickkins]

When 95 rolled out, it wasn't, I'd say, incredibly easy to use right off the bat because it was that new of a UI?

I never used any manual. I was able to figure most of it out pretty quickly. And what I couldn't figure out there was plenty of various forum users to fill in the blanks. However, right from the start, win95 just seemed right.

Metro, just seems wrong, on the desktop.

 

[mdmd]

The information available on a forum does not compare to the complexity of systems administration.
There were literally thousands of configuration details and troubleshooting tasks that needed to be addressed.

 

[jimbo45]

Windows 95 was well received. There was some sarcastic comments, like why do you have to click on start to stop it. But, in general, other than the OS/2 people, it was well liked.

There wasn't anywhere near the installed base as there is now. The average machine had 1-4 MB of memory (yes, that's Megabyte, not Gigabyte) and there was some complaining that Windows 95 really needed 8MB (and 8MB of memory at the time cost about $400).

There was a lot to like about it, and it was a LOT more stable than Windows 3.11. And you could really multitask.

Hi there
It seems the whole of I.T is fraught with "Inconsistences" like pressing the Start button to get to the SHUT DOWN screen.

For the life of me I can't understand when some I.T colleagues are saying things like "Error occured when program code ENTERED a USER EXIT ??? in normal speak you don't usually ENTER an EXIT ??? ( Or do you just to be obtuse !).

Then in say Visual basic it's quite common to see things like I = I + 1.

Now I'm sure no mathematician on this planet (or anywhere else in the Universe for that matter) would possibly agree with that statement.

However this sort of stuff works so we just let them get on with it.

Even outside I.T these things happen -- ever been to a Football Stadium where you SIT in the STANDS too. !! or at a BOXING match where THE RING as actually a SQUARE.



Win 95 WAS fine. W7 IS fine W8 NEEDS mega changes TO BE fine.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Colonel Travis]

Well said, Jimbo. I remember the DOS-to-Windows transition much better than the 3-to-95 because the first Windows was so dramatic. To me, Windows 95 was just better, not jolting in any way. Always hated DOS, thought it was archaic. Remember distinctly in March 1991 because we were at a spring training game in Arizona, a friend and I talking to my friend's dad who was asking us if Windows 3 was easy to use. We said - you have to be a total moron to not be able to use Windows.

 

[killericarus]

Has no one here made themselves familar with linux? Ubuntu maybe? Lol take a look at what linux users have been doing for over six years and now windows comes running like a dope dealer trying to make a sale. Everything that someone has been complaining about the new windows 8 has already been tried and true in linux the metro desktop linux perfected so well that what the I phone and android phones have come to resemble now comes windows playing catchup and they were slow into the transition why because they control the mass market not many. People will know that windows 8 technology has been out for almost a complete decade in linux

 

[Coke Robot]

Has no one here made themselves familar with linux? Ubuntu maybe? Lol take a look at what linux users have been doing for over six years and now windows comes running like a dope dealer trying to make a sale. Everything that someone has been complaining about the new windows 8 has already been tried and true in linux the metro desktop linux perfected so well that what the I phone and android phones have come to resemble now comes windows playing catchup and they were slow into the transition why because they control the mass market not many. People will know that windows 8 technology has been out for almost a complete decade in linux

I've used Ubuntu 10 and 11. Meh. 10 feels like mac os, which is partly the reason why I wanted to use so I get a feel for how the mac os works. It's basically the same in mac except for bland gray colors with some blue highlights. 11 is a strange beast, it's like Windows 7 clashed with mac clashed with 8. It's weird....

Speaking of such, what Linux versions act like Windows 8? I kind of want to take a gander at those...

 

[killericarus]

Every linux is the same just update your packages and and repositories linux is the most powerful system in the world even on a computer from 6 years ago you can't know half of what linux has to offer by just installing the live cd lol there are literaly weeks and months worth of options available to all who care to see past the immediate ui. What you see when you install any linux distro is possibly only the immediate feel you get because linux has been trying to emulate the out of box experience you get from windows go past that and you will see how bad windows is trying to be like linux the graphics is literaly amazing when it is configured windows has droves of people that can't configure a dam thing past putting there but in the chair in front of their pc. Beyond graphics is the sheer capability that you see windows has taken away from the computer in general . Ie windows 8 and all of its features has been on linux computers since about 06-08 when computers weren't half as powerful as they are now and yet no one knew this unless they've been usin linux for a handfull of years

 

[BillWindows]

Well said, Jimbo. I remember the DOS-to-Windows transition much better than the 3-to-95 because the first Windows was so dramatic. To me, Windows 95 was just better, not jolting in any way. Always hated DOS, thought it was archaic. Remember distinctly in March 1991 because we were at a spring training game in Arizona, a friend and I talking to my friend's dad who was asking us if Windows 3 was easy to use. We said - you have to be a total moron to not be able to use Windows.

So Colonel, when you went onto 3.1 how did you connect to the Internet, how did you install a hard drive, how did you add a video card, how did you connect to Bulletin Boards. Sure if you liked clicking on icons, you'd have to be a moron not to be able to do that anything else was terribly hard, I know, I used to repair computers in those days.
The only way to get Windows running properly was if you knew how to use DOS. Also how did you connect to a network, all the games were DOS. I could go on and on, but I can assure you, if you didnt know DOS, the chances of running Windows 3.1 properly were minimal.
There also was no way you could build a computer if you didn't know DOS very, very well. I know because I built plenty, out of second hand parts and old HDD's, motherboards and the odd video card that was around in those days. Windows was just sitting on top of DOS, so if you didn't have that right you had no chance of running Windows.
I can pretty well guarantee that if you didn't know how to use DOS in those days you didn't know how to run a computer. When Windows came out most companies were still running Word Perfect 5.1 and Lotus,Plus various DOS databases so again, nothing to do with Windows.
Actually Colonel what you said is one of the funniest comments I've read about the transition from DOS to Windows 3.1.

 

[fdegrove]

Hi,

I'd say the chances of keeping W3.x running without knowing DOS were indeed very slim.
Yet, compared to any current OS it was still child's play for anyone willing to dig into it. It was quite a bit of fun to play with cache settings, memory management, defrag utilities and so on.
Basically anything could be tuned to suit your system and your own needs.

Knowing DOS is always a good start as it gives a pretty good insight of how computers actually work. Makes you wonder how many of the young ones still do nowadays....

O, since someone asked earlier, W95 and plug and play.
Ah, the problem with that one was that there were of course still so many legacy (non p&p) cards about and quite often the install logic for the p&p ones was badly written. Especially so in the early years of p&p.
So you had a bios setting to deactivate the presence of a P&P ready OS so you could manually install cards pretty much the old way. Then you often also had to reserve IRQ or memory adress lines so card a took those and card b could not take any other free yet reserved resources etc.
Next in line were the manual edits of the registry so you could fix some stuff install routines had mucked up and so on.
Even then there was no gaurantee for it to work in the long run and if someone pulled a card or replaced one for something else you could quite often start all over again....

Still, after a while you'd know the tricky hardware and we sure were determined to get it working even with the quite limited resources of those days as you see, there was no such thing as a virtual IRQ or dynamic adressing.
In those days you had to reboot a machine for just about any change you made to a system. Never rebooted so many machines so many times as back in those days....
Yep, you had to know your stuff. But when you were good at it everyone was quite impressed.....


Cheers,

 

[lehnerus2000]

OMG, I loathed trying to fix IRQ clashes.

 

[area 66]

.....So Colonel, when you went onto 3.1 how did you connect to the Internet,.

Internet with Windows 3.1 ????? a very limited number of peoples was using Internet before 1995, Windows 3.11 was not supporting natively TCP/IP, With the release of Windows 95 we see more peoples connecting to Internet.

Less young peoples like me will remember the first advertising of Windows 95 with the sound " Start Me UP" of the Rolling Stone, that was the start of a long series of Windows with a Start button, we was starting to so thing, it end with Windows 8


here the ad of Windows 95

Microsoft Windows 95 Launch Video - Start me Up - YouTube

 

[Coke Robot]

.....So Colonel, when you went onto 3.1 how did you connect to the Internet,.

Internet with Windows 3.1 ????? a very limited number of peoples was using Internet before 1995, Windows 3.11 was not supporting natively TCP/IP, With the release of Windows 95 we see more peoples connecting to Internet.

Less young peoples like me will remember the first advertising of Windows 95 with the sound " Start Me UP" of the Rolling Stone, that was the start of a long series of Windows with a Start button, we was starting to so thing, it end with Windows 8


here the ad of Windows 95

Microsoft Windows 95 Launch Video - Start me Up - YouTube

The Start button technically hasn't gone, it's just moved to the right of the screen and now Start has gone from a menu to a screen.

 

[BillWindows]

.....So Colonel, when you went onto 3.1 how did you connect to the Internet,.

Internet with Windows 3.1 ????? a very limited number of peoples was using Internet before 1995, Windows 3.11 was not supporting natively TCP/IP, With the release of Windows 95 we see more peoples connecting to Internet.

Less young peoples like me will remember the first advertising of Windows 95 with the sound " Start Me UP" of the Rolling Stone, that was the start of a long series of Windows with a Start button, we was starting to so thing, it end with Windows 8


here the ad of Windows 95

Microsoft Windows 95 Launch Video - Start me Up - YouTube

I was using the Internet with Windows 3.1, that's why I asked how did he connect to it. Windows 3.1 was not a Morons platform, far from it, to do anything meaningful you had to know a lot of stuff, even things like sound on Windows 3.1 was very tough, sound cards had their own settings and were very hard to set up. I would love to see any normal person repair a computer with Windows 3.1 without having an extensive knowledge of DOS, it just wouldn't happen, as a matter of fact impossible.
Windows 8 is a 100 times easier than Windows 3.1, it really is Child's play. All they need for the retail version is a couple of minutes video and a half page PDF and you're good to go. On a tablet you wouldn't even need that much time, in a lot of ways I think it will be simpler than IOS.

 

[killericarus]

Same and the friggen reboots caught a neve like nothing else hell a game back then might take a whole day to configure because of hardware conflict and then there was driver issues that seemed to come anew with every reboot

 

[Coke Robot]

.....So Colonel, when you went onto 3.1 how did you connect to the Internet,.

Internet with Windows 3.1 ????? a very limited number of peoples was using Internet before 1995, Windows 3.11 was not supporting natively TCP/IP, With the release of Windows 95 we see more peoples connecting to Internet.

Less young peoples like me will remember the first advertising of Windows 95 with the sound " Start Me UP" of the Rolling Stone, that was the start of a long series of Windows with a Start button, we was starting to so thing, it end with Windows 8


here the ad of Windows 95

Microsoft Windows 95 Launch Video - Start me Up - YouTube

I was using the Internet with Windows 3.1, that's why I asked how did he connect to it. Windows 3.1 was not a Morons platform, far from it, to do anything meaningful you had to know a lot of stuff, even things like sound on Windows 3.1 was very tough, sound cards had their own settings and were very hard to set up. I would love to see any normal person repair a computer with Windows 3.1 without having an extensive knowledge of DOS, it just wouldn't happen, as a matter of fact impossible.
Windows 8 is a 100 times easier than Windows 3.1, it really is Child's play. All they need for the retail version is a couple of minutes video and a half page PDF and you're good to go. On a tablet you wouldn't even need that much time, in a lot of ways I think it will be simpler than IOS.

And also tell the user with a mouse system, "Now where is the Start button usually at?" Works every time!

 

[Coke Robot]

Same and the friggen reboots caught a neve like nothing else hell a game back then might take a whole day to configure because of hardware conflict and then there was driver issues that seemed to come anew with every reboot

Oh my GOD. I would had died. And I get pissed when something menial goes awry.

 

[Kat]

Not to mention the stack of boot-disks (all different), and tweaking your
base memory to eke out those few extra kb.....

 

[killericarus]

The disks the god damn boot disks oh man anyone remeber putting together tons of boot disk utilities way befor bootdisk .com or hirens boot wow I kinda forget all those techniques I used back then and hell before all that was lotus how I hated lotus it never did anything but impressed ma "oh how the heck did you do that you know I've been reading this book for a month and put one disk in lmao there were like eight I think

 

[Colonel Travis]

Actually Colonel what you said is one of the funniest comments I've read about the transition from DOS to Windows 3.1.

Bill, I didn't say I didn't know how to get around in DOS. I said I hated it. Big difference.

 

[BillWindows]

Actually Colonel what you said is one of the funniest comments I've read about the transition from DOS to Windows 3.1.

Bill, I didn't say I didn't know how to get around in DOS. I said I hated it. Big difference.

Fair enough, that's probably why you hate Metro, the minimalist style, and that's why I like it, sort of reminds me of the old DOS interfaces.