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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.
...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)
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
We got a kick out of the networked "Microsoft Hover" game: http://www.johnlamansky.com/blog/the-legend-of-microsoft-hover/
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.
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.