Twenty-five years ago today: Microsoft launched Windows 95 On August 24, 1995, Microsoft held what's likely to go down in history as its biggest Windows launch in history with Windows 95 August 24, 2020 https://www.zdnet.com/article/twenty-five-years-ago-today-microsoft-launched-windows-95/
Agreed; total game changer - Start Menu, taskbar, multi-tasking, 32 bit protected mode, etc. I remember the rush to get upgraded PCs that would run Windows 95. The GUI in particular has stood the test of time. People almost lost there minds when Microsoft released Windows 8 ( so awful ).
And in spite of it all that pesky Explorer.exe has plenty of room for improvement. I came onboard with Windows 98 and it was a blast of a platform. Software development exploded in droves as more freelancers also a plenty, added their useful (or not so useful) creations, setting the stage for better innovation in the O/S into fast forward and even more ingenious ideas and concepts
Windows 95 and other 9x were hybrid 16/32 systems. Windows NT first released in 1993 was fully 32-bit system. Yes, I know that NT was too heavy for typical John Doe's PC. As GUI goes there were competition too, look at BeOS or Classic Mac OS. Even Unix had all that X-protocol stuff. Unfortunately due to various reasons BeOS wasn't commercially successful. It's not like Microsoft had any innovative ideas. Microsoft just put them together at right time (computers were powerful enough) and leveraged some market position to make Windows 9x popular.
Looking back—The 25th Anniversary of Windows 95 August 24, 2020 https://blogs.windows.com/windowsex...king-back-the-25th-anniversary-of-windows-95/
And there right there is why all my production systems are 8.1 to this very moment. It was a bitter pill to stomach at first when they run silly store and tiles down the once massive customer base. I have had literally zero issues since Windows 8.1 and no intentions of being lulled into Windows 10. However a Windows 11 would be more to liking should those lame brains eventually decide on it.
8.1 Rules!! I'm grateful I have an oem copy. By the way, I have Win 95 disks at home, and Win 98. Also have a hard cover manual with 5 1/4 floppies for MS Word 2 for DOS. All junk I hoard like a packrat and will never use again. The old Word manual is interesting to read through though. It was pretty advanced stuff, but not as good as WordPerfect 5 for DOS. Also have disks for that.
Everyone says that but I would take ME over 8.x any day. It looked pretty much identical to 98, would run on 512 MB of RAM where I could not get 98 to boot with more the 256, and was one of the best gaming OSes I ever used.
I wouldn't exactly call it a game changer. AmigaOS was released ten years before Windows 95, had preemptive multitasking and was more stable. At least Windows 95 was well ahead of Macs. Macs didn't get preemptive multitasking until the release of OS X in 2001. Not that I care about Macs, as their operating system is complete garbage in my opinion.
That it was first or possibly even better does not take anything away from Windows 95. I don't know anyone that ran AmigaOS. In the days of Windows 95 everyone I knew bought a PC and was running that and probably America Online. It was the OS that put a PC on every desk. Windows 95 was a game changer because it advanced the world of computing far beyond where it had been. It took us from where only people that needed a PC had one to everyone wanting one whether they needed it or not. Gotta get on them internets...
I loved Windows Me! It had System Restore. It made me fearless. If I could have gotten ClearType to work on it I might still be using it today. Not a gamer or IT. Just a late to the party home computer user from the 90's.
Windows ME ( Millennium Edition ) worked fine for me too. Was it the first version with System Restore and ClearType? System Restore in particular was useful.
It was the first with System Restore. From what I can tell Clear Type was an XP thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType
Yes, it was XP. I fought upgrading forever and looked for months for a way to hack ME and get ClearType to work, but my old eyes won in the end.
Somehow I missed out on using Me. I went from 98 to XP and then to Vista as soon as beta versions was released.
I've used every Windows since 98 SE onwwards. I have to agree with some posters here, Windows Me was a very good OS that suffered from stability issues at launch because it had a lot of new features and under the hood improvements, including changes to the network stack, driver model, WFP, SFC and System Restore. At it's launch, many devs were thinking that Windows Me will work fine with the 9x driver set and I recall many tried to push VxD drivers to Windows Me, which is what caused all those stability issues - in reality, ME was designed to use the same drivers as Windows 2000. By the time the developers fixed this, it was too late and Windows Me had already developed the reputation. Windows Me was indeed one of the best gaming OSes at it's time and also right up to 2003 when it went EOL. It was also more stable and usable than any of the 9x, and did not have compatibility issues like Windows 2000. Actually I don't think there was any Windows that was a disaster per se. I used Windows Vista as well and hardly had any issues (Vista SP2 was basically just Windows 7 with features cut back anyway). Windows 8 was fine as long as one got used to that Metro UI but 8.1 was a big, big improvement....
Discarding a discussion that over the decades the NT and the MS-DOS shell versions of Windows were two completely different entities and having worked with Windows since v2.0, it wasn't until Windows 2000 that I could put the words "Windows" and "stable" together with any degree of confidence. But, yeah, Windows 95 was very very good for Microsoft and the mainstream user base once MS put its foot down and mandated it open to its own desktop and not what GUI Packard Bell or Acer or HP or whoever drummed up.
Yes I agree, looking back, Win 95 and Win 98 weren't that robust. Win 2000 and Win XP were pretty good, but XP became unstable because of all the security tools that I was running. Win 8.1 is so far the best Windows I ever used, very stable. But yes Win 95 was a big deal for M$, and it was installed on the first PC that I bought back in 1996, an IBM Aptiva. I remember that I became fascinated by the Internet since day one.
You Probably Never Found This Wholesome Windows 95 Easter Egg September 4, 2020 https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2020/09/you-probably-never-found-this-wholesome-windows-95-easter-egg/