News - Happy Birthday Windows 95!

[OilSheikh]

Windows 95 setup


Windows 95 wallpaper, anyone ?



Microsoft Plus!


Word 6.0


Full Scandisk in Windows 95

[Malphas]

Windows 95 was a big relief for people who didn't like to fiddle with MSDOS and Win 3.11 shell for it, so it was quite a progress from these two in its day. The big downside to it is that's also just a more sophisticated "shell" for MSDOS, but it worked better than 3.11. However, the release of Windows 2000 was a real operating system, and final departure from DOS "shells". So far, the best *Microsoft* OS I worked with is Windows 2000 regarding features, efficiency, speed. XP added mostly just bloat to it, but in the end I find XP, when nicely nLited and devoid of all the bloat, the best Microsoft OS to date. Essentially Windows 2000+. I don't think they're going to surpass the success of XP ever, since their policy is not to bother with optimisation and efficiency, but mostly having fun with shiny graphics that adds nothing essential and crucial to an OS. Essentially, now they're still sticking to exploiting Windows 2000 kernel, and sticking some new, shiny graphics to it, but their PRs wants you to think otherwise, of course... I just stick to what works best for me, and that's XP at the moment. "Best" meaning speed and efficiency.

Wow. Everyone's entitled to their opinion but this is just very misinformed. Vista was a huge overhaul of the NT kernel, and yes it did add a lot of bloat and demanded more resources but it introduced a lot of much needed improvements in security and reliability. Windows 7 and now Windows 8 have been developed to successively tighten that up and improve efficiency, your failure to realise this and believe the opposite is the case makes me question if you've properly used them. Expecting a modern operating system to be as lightweight as 2000/XP is just as ridiculous as expecting it to be as lightweight as DOS.

On a sidenote, it's pretty well documented that Windows 7 beats XP in terms of performance on modern hardware (i.e. discrete graphics card and an SSD) due to being able to properly take advantage of it, which XP simply cannot and gains its sole advantage from having a smaller footprint, which again is down to being a less mature, less secure, less reliable system which was coded when Internet access - and the issues inherent with that - was almost just an afterthought rather than something absolutely integral to the OS.

[ET3D]

Why is 17 a worthy birthday to remember? Call me again when Windows 95 is at the legal drinking age. It needs some good alcohol in it, I'm sure.

For me Windows 95 OSR2 was that "good enough" OS which made me switch from OS/2 Warp (which came after the Amiga). I missed some of what OS/2 offered (and in turn missed some of what the Amiga offered), but Windows 95 provided a friendlier user experience than OS/2 coupled with a lot of software, and was simply good enough for everyday use. It was pretty stable and even survived motherboard replacements without a hitch, which I found impressive. I felt that even with its limitations it was the best choice, all things considered.

[=assassin=]

I have very fond memories of Windows 95, as it was on the first PC I had. I used it for playing Grand Prix 2 alot, it also helped me out in my early days in college before I got a newer PC, but unfortunately that second PC had the terrible Windows ME.

[tombonez]

Awesome. Is that you in the picture too?

[pctech2012]

I have very fond memories of Windows 95, as it was on the first PC I had. I used it for playing Grand Prix 2 alot, it also helped me out in my early days in college before I got a newer PC, but unfortunately that second PC had the terrible Windows ME.

Yep had 95b on my first PC which I bought from a well known high street retailer after not having had one for a few years with the then awesome Pentium 166 MMX CPU and a whole 16MB of RAM, 2.1GB PATA hard disk and 20 speed CD-ROM drive.

When I started my current job ME (or Monkey Edition as it was nicknamed at work) was still around.

We used to inwardly sigh when someone called up with a problem who was running it as it was so bad there was very little we could do to get software running on it which used to fail with all kinds of weird errors.

[tickleonthetum]

When I first installed it I spent hours listening/watching to "Good Times" by Edie Brickell... ( )

Ahhh memories....

All together now... Good times, bad times, give me some of that...

[CakeBoy]

Brilliant photos. I remember us buying a pretty crappy system for £800+ in 1995. It came with a Cyrix cpu and after suffering abysmal speeds from the outset we eventually found a generic hard drive made in India. It was a really grim system and didn't even ship with an O/S. We installed W95 We struggled for a year or so and replaced it with a second hand Intel 586 based system that was much faster.

[TooNice]

I agree that 17 is an odd number to celebrate given that we don't celebrate it every year.

I thought Windows 95 was.. okay. The best thing about it for me was the virtual memory function. At the time, there was an increasing amount of games that required 16MB of RAM while I only had 12MB.

Sure, relying that much on VM made loading time unacceptable by modern standard. But I had more time than money, am naturally patient and long load time beats no game at all for me at the time.

While I wouldn't go back to Win98SE, I liked it a lot. I never had stability issues, partly because I would reformat my machine about twice a year (again lots of spare time) so garbage was kept to a minimum.

In a way it was good because I knew exactly where everything was but I just can't be bothered nowadays and I suppose that it is good having the option of never having to do a fresh reinstall.

[mtyson]

The point was that Win95 introduced a lot of the interface elements that people love about Windows 7. Most notably the Start Button, which is about to get zapped with the launch of Windows 8.

[Bluecube]

I got Windows 95 with my first PC. I think it had been out just a few months and those were the days when months were not quite the long time in technology terms are they are today! My PC was a top of the range P133, 16Mb, 1Gb hard drive, 2Mb 2D graphics card BEAST of a machine. And came with Windows 95... My previous PC had been an Amiga with it's superior (to Windows 3.11) Workbench GUI so Windows 95 was the revelation I wanted to see! It even came with a web browser!! Yes, I liked Windows 95 right up through it's iterations to Windows 98SE...

[csgohan4]

Remeber Windows Plus that came with it as well lol

[g8ina]

I was well into my computers by the time 95 arrived, but it was a helluva lot faster than 3.1 !

In the early 80s, I was using DOS 3 so any GUI was a godsend. Remember playing Leisure Suit Larry on those early PCs Oh and that Scandisk was wonderful

[jnutt]

Who remembers the Artist and song of the Music Video that was available on the Windows 95 install disk

Doh! Just noticed someone beat me too it LOL

[pctech2012]

Anyone remember Hover! from the Win 95 disk?

[Agent]

I reinstalled Windows 95 so many times that I can still actually remember my serial key still.

Why can't I remove this stuff from my head? There must be something more useful I can store there.