What did people do when Windows 95 came out?

[johnpombrio]

I remember the Win95 launch well. It was heavily advertised by MS on normal advertising venues like TV and print ad in normal magazines like Pop Mechanics. It installed very well, looked beautiful, and I remember playing with the built in Media player my first "streaming" music video. It was a show off to all who would listen to my accolades. I loved it!

 

[iseeuu]

I was a Windows 95 Beta tester. Never could make DOS work ... don't have the memory ability for all those commands. Windows 95 worked for me. Didn't need to remember what to type ... just find the "icon" or "thumnail" ... click and go. Great for a "visual Learner". One of my first challenges was getting "Descent" to run ...

 

[pparks1]

Going to Windows 95 was certainly a big change. For me, I didn't heavily use Windows prior to Windows95. While I had Windows 3.1, I preferred to do as much stuff as I could within DOS. Yes, I said DOS. For example, I used Word Perfect 5 for DOS and it was like a GUI, but was text based.

The beauty back in the days of Windows 3.1 and DOS was that system backups were unbelievably easy as you didn't have a registry or anything complicated like that. Literally, you could backup your C:\windows directory (~30MB) to another folder, external device, tape drive, etc.... Then, if your corrupted everything in Windows, you could simply replace C:\windows with your backup copy and it was all back to the way that it was.

Another great thing was fact that you could boot to DOS for fast boots. If you wanted to run windows, you ran win and it would boot up Windows.

A good friend of mine in college got Windows 95 when it first came out. He installed it onto his Pentium 66 computer, with 16MB of RAM and a 540MB SCSI hard disk (was approx a $4,000 system) in 1995. This machine at the time was an absolute beast.

 

[Coke Robot]

Going to Windows 95 was certainly a big change. For me, I didn't heavily use Windows prior to Windows95. While I had Windows 3.1, I preferred to do as much stuff as I could within DOS. Yes, I said DOS. For example, I used Word Perfect 5 for DOS and it was like a GUI, but was text based.

The beauty back in the days of Windows 3.1 and DOS was that system backups were unbelievably easy as you didn't have a registry or anything complicated like that. Literally, you could backup your C:\windows directory (~30MB) to another folder, external device, tape drive, etc.... Then, if your corrupted everything in Windows, you could simply replace C:\windows with your backup copy and it was all back to the way that it was.

Another great thing was fact that you could boot to DOS for fast boots. If you wanted to run windows, you ran win and it would boot up Windows.

A good friend of mine in college got Windows 95 when it first came out. He installed it onto his Pentium 66 computer, with 16MB of RAM and a 540MB SCSI hard disk (was approx a $4,000 system) in 1995. This machine at the time was an absolute beast.

$4,000!!! Wow, and I'm complaining about a 4TB hard drive costing $300 when a 3TB hard drive is a hundred less...

 

[Coke Robot]

So in general, the transition from Windows 3.11 to 95 was fairly smooth after you learned how to use it?

And if you went from DOS to 95, that, I would assume, was a big deal.

 

[pparks1]

Be happy with prices today. When i updated my 486SX-25 from 4MB of RAM to 20MB of RAM by adding a 16MB SIMM chip, it was a $300 upgrade.

And I still have the receipt from the upgrade that I did from my 170MB Connor hard drive to my whopping 730MB Western Digital hard drive for $359...and that was the lowest price I could find then.

 

[NoelDP]

My first Windows machine was a Pentium 75 (with the the floating-point bug!). It was big (full tower) and beautiful!
After a Dragon 64 and a Commodore, it was a delight - I was still using DOS-based machines at work.... anything from a Commodore PET to x486's to Amstrads.
IIRC I was in Singapore when Win95 was released (although it might have been Win98 - I spent a lot of time out there around that period) and remember the midnight launch parties - I had intended to turn up to one, but work overran, and by the time I was done, I was too knackered to go out

 

[Coke Robot]

It kind of sucks that nowadays, there aren't the massive launch parties or people waiting outside for a new product. People nowadays sell their kidneys and wait in a few days advance for a giant itouch that did nothing better than the one before.....odd.

 

[fdegrove]

Hi,

So in general, the transition from Windows 3.11 to 95 was fairly smooth after you learned how to use it?

And if you went from DOS to 95, that, I would assume, was a big deal.

Coming from DOS or even W3.xx and going to W95 was a major step for everyone I would think. Steep learning curve too but if you wanted to keep up with things you just had no choice.

Come to think of it those were the days of really busy helpdesks. Being knowledgeable on registry stuff and how to make so called plug&play stuff (plug & pray as we called it) work as it should got you lots of respect from colleagues. Pretty gratifying jobs back in those days.
Nowadays it all childs play really. Well, almost....

Cheers,

 

[legacy7955]

Come to think of it those were the days of really busy helpdesks. Being knowledgeable on registry stuff and how to make so called plug&play stuff (plug & pray as we called it) work as it should got you lots of respect from colleagues. Pretty gratifying jobs back in those days.
Nowadays it all childs play really. Well, almost....

Cheers,

It was a little before my time but I was old enough to vaguely remember seeing the news showing folks at Best Buy and other stores waiting to get in to buy Win 95. I even remember that I saw one story where they had the whole MS team (team Geek!) in Redmond being interviewed along with Bill Gates and Paul Allen as well, they were really enthusiastic and obviously happy times back then. I wish I could remember which network has this news package I'd love to see it again. Very exciting times.


It might be a little off topic but care to tell us a little more about your experiences helping folks back then? Sounds like an interesting offshoot of this thread. What made P&P so random back then exactly? You figure it would be simpler because there was a lot less hardware to choose from back then.

 

[Coke Robot]

I wonder though, the start menu was a HUGELY new concept compared to how Windows used to be. It was used to clean up the Desktop and allowed you to find your programs and files so much more easier. How was that taken?

Also, I was thinking about this today and how Windows 8 seems to correlate to 95. Back then, the start menu was used to find things and organize better. That in turn helped to clear out the Desktop icons from cluttering so much. That later evolved to a better menu that came out in vista and refined in 7. It used to be where you clicked on something from the Desktop and started it because it was easily right there, easy to access. Then, the start menu came along and began to the end to that, where you simply can find something easily, and maybe having some things on the Desktop for easy convenience. Then, at the height of that model with Windows 7, a new Taskbar came along with a refined start menu of vista's. Now, instead of having things on the Desktop or the start menu, it became pinned to the Taskbar. Having things on the Desktop has effectively become something you don't really do anymore. Not only that the start menu, the place where you could start things and find things, has become something of less purpose. The Most Frequently Used list has turned into Sometimes Used list and the All Programs list has become Never Looked At list. The Taskbar killed the start menu.

That's where Windows 8 comes in. It has the tiled window concept of Windows 1. It has the concept of the start menu of vista. It has the concept of multitasking of 95. It's a mosh of old and new in a different design than ever before.

 

[crawfish]

Be happy with prices today. When i updated my 486SX-25 from 4MB of RAM to 20MB of RAM by adding a 16MB SIMM chip, it was a $300 upgrade.

And I still have the receipt from the upgrade that I did from my 170MB Connor hard drive to my whopping 730MB Western Digital hard drive for $359...and that was the lowest price I could find then.

I got that beat.*

Upgrading my Atari 400 to 32 KB of RAM was a couple hundred bucks as best I remember. Other stuff I still have the receipts for...

My first hard drive was a 20 MB Seagate, and it cost $299 bare.

Upgrading my Atari ST with an extra 2 MB of RAM was $575 for 16 chips; the board they went on was another $150.

The original HP Deskjet cost me $675, and it printed about 1 ppm. That 300 DPI looked good, though!

I must have been rich back in the day.

* Now I shall await someone to recount their computer version of the U.S.S. Indianapolis story.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
Win 95

It appeared on a desks and we "Just used it" !! (Still got it as a VM !!). We didn't have people in those days giving us "3 Weeks of training" etc etc -- we had to find out ourselves -- and even then in those days there was always someone who seemed to figure this stuff out while we were still looking for the ON switch for the PC's !!.

Was actually quite a good OS for its day and seemed to work on most hardware around at the time. Much Much better than that absolutely HORRENDOUS OS Ms came out with -- WINDOWS NT ( we called it Windows NeanderThal or Windows No Thanks) -- might have been OK for servers but as a desktop it was a total pain to get ANY periphera hardware to work. Windows 95 was reasonably "Plug 'n Play". Windows 98 2nd edition or whatever they called it built on W95 and was also a decent os for the time.

Considering we only used to have things like "Text based " desktops -- anybody remember the IBM mainframes with the monochrome (green) 3270 terminals (and "big deal 4 colour" 3278's when they came out a year or two later) running that hideous PROFS system for email --totally text based - no attachments then even Windows 3.11 was a relevation and we all used it without any serious problems.

In fact it just showed how revolutionary Windows actually was -- companies started setting up LANS based on a CONSUMER OS !!! -- we used to have a really hideous DOS NOWELL network but everyone appreciated the Windows 3.11 LAN as soon as we could use it -- decent apps like EXCEL and Word then became tools of choice and Bye Bye Hideous old IBM text based stuff. (We kept TSO around for a little while longer but the office LAN was much more useable --TSO was only needed for some old back office "Clunker like apps") Today nearly everything is server and LAN based. I don't think users would be happy with text based systems any more !!.

The only surviving office application today from IBM in some sort of use is that absolutely and totally USELESS Lotus Notes system -- everybody I know that has to use this absolutely hates it - especially for email. Ms's office products still rule the roost whatever you might think of Windows. The whole concept is based around 10 zillion and one databases requiring all sorts of totally absurd permissions and probably has the worst search system on the planet. Still also basically "Text driven " too -- really a dinosaur application long past its sell by date..

Anybody these days would set up Company Intranets for this type of stuff anyway.

It was quite amazing how robust the early Windows 3.11 Lans were -- I don't think people would even BEGIN to think about trying to set up those sorts of networks even if there was nothing else around !!!.

IBM killed themseleves when they did all sorts of things with its OS/2 system and had a bust up with MS. OS/2 was actually vastly superior --built as a mult-tasking OS from the start -- but as always corporate greed with the bozos in suits against the "fledgling newcomer with people dressed in Jeans etc - Enter Microsoft -- a tiny company at that time!

The rest is History.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[fafhrd]

I loved OS/2 2.1 - in the demonstrations* at the computing trades fairs - it always worked as it should - no crashes, robust, on 8 MB DRAM Compaq Luggables attached to VGA projectors - then compare the NT demos in the Microsoft theatre next door, with dual 486, 32MB DRAM Compaq SystemPro towers, and the inevitable hangs and crashes when trying to load Microsoft Office, or play a video clip.

The OS/2 would multitask Windows 3.1 apps, DOS Programs, Native OS/2apps (not a lot of those about) and demonstrate how robust it was by crashing one running app, while everything else still ran.

NT would bluescreen and spend most of its time rebooting.

But when you got your free sample OS/2 giveaway home, and tried to install it - insert disk 1, insert disk 2, insert disk 1 again, insert disk 2, 3, 4,... and if you got the CD-ROM Version, it still meant swapping disks - but you had to format and copy them first!

I know why it did not catch on.

But it was OS/2 that had the first proper desktop on the x86 platform - You had program Manager or file manager in 3.1, and no proper desktop until Windows 95. Some of the freer IBM spirits produced a "Workplace Shell for Windows", which you could install on windows 3.x to make it look like OS/2 - worked ok too. I have a copy around somewhere, I wonder if I could get it to work in a VM?

*Blue golf shirts with "IBM" in white, sneakers and and jeans were the uniform for the Big Blue staff at these events.

 

[Rickkins]

That's where Windows 8 comes in. It has the tiled window concept of Windows 1. It has the concept of the start menu of vista. It has the concept of multitasking of 95. It's a mosh of old and new in a different design than ever before.

Er, no, this is not where win8 comes in. That would imply that it is some sort of natural progression, which it is most assuredly, not. Win8 is a cynical attempt to bully ms's way into the tablet market, an attempt by the way that will fail miserably. They will not supplant apple or android.

Trying to pretend that win8 is some sort of advance is a fool's errand. Ms has shown utter contempt for the billion or so desktop users that have made the company what it is. Win8 will rightly fail on such a massive scale that those who supported it will wish they had never uttered a word in ms's defense.

Imho, of course.....

 

[Vince53]

My 4 megabyte computer couldn't handle it, but I bought a new one with 16 megs of RAM! Would you believe it? 16 megabytes! I would stare in awe at such power! My family was amazed at how it could show videos. VIDEOS! On a computer!

And the new computer had a modem! We were on America Online because they sent you free floppy disks in the mail to get you started. And it had a CD player! I wondered if CD players would ever catch on, because the floppy drive handled all our download needs.

The proponents of DOS and OS/2 were pitching fits about how they hated Bill Gates and how it was morally wrong to submit to his authority. Fortunately, the world has survived and is a better place because of him.

Windows 95! It was fantastic!

 

[Kat]

I went to Windows 95 from DOS 6.22/WfW 3.11 in late 1996 or early 97.

It transformed my 486 DX4/100 with 16MB RAM and I was finally able to
enjoy the power the machine had to offer. It never showed its true potential
under the older OS.

Getting used to the desktop concept took a while, and for some time I simply
ran the OS through Windows Explorer, just as I'd run WfW via File Manager.

The installation from floppies sucked, though.


**EDIT: - Yes, I did have a CD-ROM drive, but I got the floppy
version of W95 on sale for a song. (I still have it, actually, but
most of the disks have long-since failed).**

 

[mdmd]

What did people do when Windows 95 came out?

I installed it onto this Pentium.

...went down to the local book store
and bought a 600 page systems adminstrators manual
on how to configure, deploy, and troubleshoot 95.

 

[Coke Robot]

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?

 

[legacy7955]

This is becoming a GREAT retrospective thread about "the good ole days" of PC computing. I was too young to remember back when so I hope more stories will be posted here. I am looking forward to it!!!

5***** thread!