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Windows 95 Turns 15
An anonymous reader writes "15 years ago on this day, Microsoft's then new Windows 95 was released. Among other things it moved users away from the archaic file manager and program manager to Windows explorer and the start menu. Compared to today's 'social desktop,' I'd much rather have the simpler and more sparse (pre-Internet Explorer integrated) Windows Explorer, though I do not like the (lack of) stability that Windows 95 offers. Of course if you were alive then, you've probably seen the commercials." I fondly recall downloading build after build and installing them. But within months of the official release, I switched to Linux.
I remember getting caught up in the hype and putting it on a 486 DX2 66 with 4 MB. Damn but that was slower than molasses running uphill in January. Suffered with that computer for nearly 2 years before I saved up enough for a replacement (poor college student at the time).
...yes.. I remember the technical strategy behind Windows 95. Since Windows NT required more hardware let's create a mediocre Windows until hardware gets cheap enough to put NT on every machine. (finally it was accomplished with Windows XP)
I never really liked the Windows Explorer as a file manager. Hundreds of different windows, folder settings now following you around but different folders showing differently, slow and just not powerful enough. Pre-Vista era I always liked Turbo Navigator a lot more, similar to how I use xplorer2 now. The recent Windows versions came with even more simpler and stupid file managers. I guess they're fine for a casual user, but a file manager really needs to have tabs and two panels.
me too
get win98 or win98se and run ROM or ROM2se on it (ROM = Revenge of Mozilla) it is basically a tool that strips out IE & OE and the win98 windows explorer and replaces it with a hacked/patched win95 windows explorer, and it is much more stable than win95 & more stable than a stock win98/win98se (i have to say it makes the best win9x possible but the only caveat is any application that requires internet explorer will not function. but anything else works great.
after doing a quick google search i think this app is nowhere to be found, i bet i can dig up a copy on an old CD-r that i kept with lots of ancient third party applications for win9x
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Xplorer2 is great, somehow I think it was a mistake of MS to not include a dual pane option, as it's a real pain in the ass at times to copy things around the file tree using explorer. But given either Xplorer2 or Teracopy and it works out a lot more effectively.
We got a kick out of the networked "Microsoft Hover" game: http://www.johnlamansky.com/blog/the-legend-of-microsoft-hover/
Of course if you were alive then, you've probably seen the commercials.
You don't honestly think that slashdot is in any way relevant to kids 15 and under, do you? If we even said "old enough to remember seeing the commercials" and graciously said that someone 5 years old at the time might remember them, that would mean you expect slashdot to have relevance to the 20-and-under set.
Although I honestly don't remember the commercials, and Windows 95 was the first OS I bought (or pirated? I don't remember now) on CD. I do recall that 95 was the first windows release that actually required you to enter a registration key at installation; 3.1 would graciously let you "enter it later".
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Sometime around 2000 or 2001, I inherited a Windows 98 machine with massive installed cruft. It ran slowly, and did a lot of weird things. Finally, one morning, it finally collapsed. After trying resuscitation to no avail, I grabbed the handiest Windows CD -- which happened to be the initial release of Windows 95. I installed it and was amazed at how quick and responsive the PC (a Pentium of some sort) had become. So I downloaded and installed about two dozen patches. Not only fast, but a lot more stable than I remembered Windows 95 being.
Finally, after a few weeks, I decided to try using fully patched Windows 95 on a minimal machine. So I installed it on my experimental CPU fanless 5x86 (a 133MHz 486 with a heatsink about the size of a beer can) with 16mb of memory. It ran beautifully. It usually went a couple of weeks between reboots -- which is about what my current Linux system can manage before the memory leaks get it. I used it for a number of years until application bloat, application dependence on IE libraries and lack of Windows 9 USB support made continued use impractical. And I liked it. I liked it better than much heftier machines with Windows 98. Lots better than Windows 2K (which I, stupidly in retrospect, tried to configure with a separate admin user -- something which pretty much did not work with the applications then available although no one admitted it at the time). Better than Windows XP. I never tried Vista and don't much care for Windows 7 although I think the latter is at least fairly well crafted, and I have to give Microsoft credit for getting hardware configuration working pretty much right after only 13 or 14 years of trying.
So, my feeling is that Windows peaked somewhere around Windows 95-OSR2 and their single user OS pretty much has been downhill from there. I wonder if Microsoft had decided to continue develop and support an MSDOS core OS separate from their server/workstation OS, and had abandoned failed experiments like the Registry and IE integration as soon as their flaws were recognized, if they might not have an OS today that was competitive on todays low powered, performance limited, personal devices.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Sorry, I call bullshit. A known issue, fixed only in 1999, would prevent Windows 95 and 98 from going over 49.7 days of uptime (2^32 milliseconds). Much hilarity ensued back in the day since "how could anyone have noticed / run into this" :-)
Thing is, I know of at least one other installation that was reputed to have stayed up for a long time - much like the GP asserts.
My guess is the machine(s) in question were somehow or other rebooting themselves in the middle of the night long before 49.7 days was up.
I just copied data from a windows 95 machine at a ski resort that they use to keep an old editable version of the trail map on. They are finally getting around to getting data off it to see if there are updated versions of the software. Also worked recently on an old Dos 3.x machine with a power supply dated '87 that runs a voltage QA test machine for parts that are made for the F22 Raptor. A modern replacement for that test hardware is in the $15,000 range. While this isn't common, don't confuse it with dead. Another customer we have has a windows 95 computer that we periodically image to another system and test that runs a laser cutting machine. A replacement computer is available from the manufacturer, for $4500. Sometimes just doing preventative work on a machine that will cost that much to replace is worth it. Both customers have multiple of the systems, so if one were to go down they wouldn't be crippled while the replacement was shipped to them, so they have weighed the risk.
Yes, I kinda cringe anytime I get close to a machine like that and my official recommendation to both companies is to replace the machine (Or at least start putting some money into a fund to replace it ASAP). But really, do you expect that $15,000 replacement hardware to last 22 years like that Dos 3.x system has lasted? Or to last the 13 years that windows 95 machine has lasted? Once hardware gets that old you're certainly living on borrowed time, but I have seen way to many capacitor issues on newer hardware to even begin to assume a machine will last more than 5 years now =/.
Do you Gentoo!?
It's what most machines were shipping with in 1996 and 97, anyway. FAT32 support, no integrated MSIE crap, and a bit more stable than the original Win95 release.
I still have a pair of PPro gaming boxes running Win95 OSR2 (as well as various other OSes from the time period including BeOS 5 and versions of both Mandrake and Red Hat Linux.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I was at Boeing back then. Everyone in engineering had Macs but the fix was in with Microsoft. W3.1 was judged unsuitable for use, so only a few poor suckers were stuck with that. We had a number of PCs running DOS. Great for lab use, as numerous ISA cards were avaiilable, or easily cobbled up by our technicians.
One day, the IT folks showed up and dropped a Dell 166 on my desk (between my Mac and X terminal). It only had a DOS command prompt, but the hardware guys assured me that the Windows guys would follow shortly with their install disks.
About 3 months later, this pig was still sitting there with nothing but a DOS command prompt staring back at me. The story was that initial W95 installs were proving to be a disaster and IT was in the process of staffing up to levels needed to support the platform. I went to my boss and told him, "While I'm waiting, there's this other system available now that I can load and try out. Its called Linux."
He said, "OK" and I've never looked back. Thank you Mr. Gates.
Have gnu, will travel.
WTF is Freudian?
Kids don't get taught about psychology, and industry and state doesn't talk about psychology, because psychology is the science that is abused to create PR, propaganda, and advertising. If the people knew about psychology (and even things like what a Freudian slip is, or who Freud was), then they would be much less effected by PR, propaganda, and advertising.
I think those crackpots Scientologists oppose psychology too because if people understood psychology, they would be able to spot the brainwashing.
Car analogies break down.
I assume you were IBM back then. Then come on. OS/2 wasn't even available preloaded on your own computers. I bought an Ambra and I couldn't get OS/2 preloaded nor OS/2 support for the sound card on the Ambra motherboard. Your IBM resellers didn't carry or push OS/2. I had a bear of a time getting OS/2 1.3 until you had the direct order program. Also you wouldn't distribute in normal channels.
IBM was talking out of both sides of their mouth the whole time they were pushing OS/2. Sun and Microsoft both stood behind their OSes 100%.
My work Win 95 machine, in the 300MHz days, was coaxed into running for about 30 days without a reboot. By then it was unusable though, I remember icons on the screen all being corrupted, you could barely start any applications due to lack of resources. I can't remember if I purposefully rebooted it in the end, or if it crashed.
9x did not do stability, but it did mean that when sat in front of a 9x machine you wouldn't get stuck at the office late. 2 minutes before home time, a quick double ctrl-alt-del and it would be a case of "fucking Windows has crashed again. Oh well, might as well go home, 'cause I can do anything without the computer working". You can't get away with that any more, every day. Maybe once a month. The PHBs have wised-up to the fact that most computers don't appear to be as shit as they used to be. Windows is of course as shit as it used to be, just in different ways.
Just remembered another 95 PC in the same office, connected up to a client's network for support, that went really strange one day, the clock started going too quickly. I think it was going about 4 times faster than it should, and seeing the clock spinning too fast was utterly hilarious. The machine seemed to be working fine otherwise though. A reboot cleared it, and I never saw Windows do that again... that was the kind of craziness you got with 9x!.
Car analogies break down.
It's nice that Microsoft and its trolled have "fixed" written history.
Windows 95 was not released to the consumer market until 1996.
You can edit WiKipedia, but you can't change reality.
E
I was working as a computer programmer in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember the big fuss around the first 16 bit micro-processors, Intel 8086, Zilog Z8000, and Motorola 68000. I particularly remember when the hardware guys at my company got their hands on a sample 68000. We looked at that 64 pin chip like it was a precious jewel. The general consensus there and in the computer mags was that the 68000 was the best of the lot. So what happened? IBM came out with the PC using the 8086 and 'the masses', the non-cognoscenti, all rushed out and bought that. My thought at the time was that they were just mesmerized by the 3 letters IBM on the machine, and it ran MS-DOS. So my perception is that that's how Microsoft first cornered their market. To paraphrase Mae West, "Goodness had nothing to do with it." Fast forward about 10 years. I'm working at a place that sells software on a lot of platforms, I ported the product to various Unix clones but they also had guys doing MS-DOS and IBM stuff. OK, I get assigned to do a port to OS/2 version 1.0. I did it and thought the OS was pretty cool. It was my first use of threading, except for some crude stuff using unix fork. Then the next version of OS/2 came out. It's been awhile, but I think it was supposed to have been done by a British group that had a totally different philosophy. Everything I'd written broke, and I struggled to get it working till my boss said forget it. He never had anything to do with OS/2 after that.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
It reminds me of my first internship. I had the choice between running Win95 or NT4. I would crash Win95 at least 3 times a day versus maybe 1 for NT4. What did I choose? Win95. It was rebooting fairly quickly and it ran faster and the machine I had. Win95 was more productive for me despite of the multiple crashes a day. That's sad.
I remember all the hype about win95. You could actually buy it on floppies if you didn't have a CD drive or if it was not recognized. I never had too much of a problem installing it, but just about every computer had specific config.sys and autoexec.bat files. I do remember it being rather fragile and could be made to crash pretty easily. I was typically reinstalling win95 about every 6 months as that proved the only way to get consistent good operation from it.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.