Windows 95 holds a special place in my heart as it was my very first OS on my very first computer. While browsing Youtube I found this footage of the release event of Windows 95 that has not been seen in 27 years. Hopefully you will find it as entertaining as I did. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JzfROUDsK0
It's hard to believe the excitement back then when an OS was released. People lined up around the block to buy the CDs for Windows 95, 98, NT 4.0, and 2000. When Windows 10 was released they tried to give it away to Windows 7 users through Windows Update and a lot of folks tried to block it because they didn't want it.
Thanks Raza! Will have a look (although I usually block YT). Going back on Memory Lane: If I remember me well, my first PC came with Windows 3.1, from a "PC Prive Project" at that time. Man, was it expensive. It was a CompaQ. It came with a "shell" around W 3.1. That "shell" was originally from Xerox. Long before that I was programming on mainframe in Algol with those horrible punch-cards...
I know, and I think one of the reason was that back then when you were buying a new Microsoft product, you knew that the product you were buying would be high quality, free of bugs and issues. In those days Microsoft used to have a quality control department and they took extra time to ensure the product they were releasing met their quality standards before it went public. In fact, if you watch the video at time stamp 12:01, Bill Gates alludes to this same philosophy of making sure that the product was thoroughly tested before release. Nowadays, Microsoft just releases a half baked product to consumers, and then uses them as quality testers, and release patches to fix what was found in the wild. This is one of the biggest reasons people no longer line up on release day to buy Windows. In fact, my rule of thumb since Vista days is to wait at least one year after the OS release to upgrade, and upgrade only if their was a pressing need to upgrade. Then you must have had that wow moment when you first booted into Windows 95. It was so radically different from anything else on the market and a great leap from Windows 3.1 Yes, and the biggest reason why Windows 95 PC was my first one was that PCs were insanely expensive back then and people mostly bought them to play games on them. There was nothing else to do. I had bought a copy of Encarta Encyclopedia with my new PC and for next many months all I did was browse Encarta. Internet was very new and very expensive, and I could not afford it.
I'll tell you, I do remember being less than enthusiastic about it. Maybe you can understand better with an example. The scribes in ancient Egypt had the power of writing that was not accessible to the masses. I with MS-DOS was like a scribe..... and other colleagues like me. We were very afraid of an operating system that was easily accessible to everyone. Then of course I changed my mind. I don't know if you can understand.
That was an interesting example and I agree with you that handing someone something they do not understand is a recipe for disaster. But the wow moment I was talking about was the very first impression you got when you booted into Windows 95, before the implication of handing this much power to the masses had time to sink in. Windows 95's fancy GUI (at least for that time), the look and the feel were so different from Windows 3.1 that you could not but say wow!
Same over here, Windows 95 was also installed on my first PC back in 1996 (IBM Aptiva desktop) but I was never really a fan of it. I think Windows XP was the first OS that I actually liked. And I actually got Encarta for free with the IBM desktop, and just like you I loved it so much, so I knew I had to get myself an internet connection because I figured it had even more information. Luckily it wasn't that expensive over here in Holland.
It was included with my first Window PC. I liked it so much I wanted to work on the Encarta dev team but they killed it off because Wikipedia. I don't feel that was a fair trade. I actually liked Windows 95 at the time. It was all very exciting back then. Not so much anymore.
I agree with you about Windows XP. Between XP and 95, XP wins hands down. One of the major benefits of XP was that it was a cross between regular Windows and Windows NT, so it was more powerful and more stable. I am sure if I had bought an IBM desktop there would have been perks included, but I had my Win 95 desktop built by a local business, and if I recall correctly, a comparable IBM PC would have been almost 2.5 times more expensive.
