Windows 95 is 25 years old today
By: Tom Warren (The Verge)
Remember Windoze? VGA graphics and 10 megabyte hard drives coupled with an amazing 486 processor.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Update August 24th, 2020: Today marks Windows 95's 25th anniversary. Check out our retrospective originally from its 20th anniversary below and updated slightly to reflect the new anniversary date.
Twenty-five years ago today, people were lining up at CompUSA or Best Buy at midnight. It wasn't a new Call of Duty game, Apple's latest iPod, or any type of hardware at all that shoppers were waiting for. It was software, and not just any software: Windows 95.
Microsoft's Windows 95 release on August 24th, 1995 was a highly anticipated launch. Jay Leno helped launch the software alongside Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, with a lot of jokes and the appearance of the entire Windows 95 development team on stage. It was a huge day for Microsoft with TV commercials blasting the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" with images of the new Start button that we still (just about) use today. Microsoft even hired Jennifer Anniston and Matthew Perry to create an hour-long cyber sitcom all about Windows 95, and the software was so popular that 7 million copies were sold during the first five weeks.
Away from all the fanfare around the launch, PC geeks were choosing between Pentium or 486 processors, IDE or SCSI hard drives, double-speed CD-ROMs, and Sound Blaster audio cards to experience the best of Windows 95. Microsoft added a lot of features to Windows 95, but the biggest was a new Start button, menu, and task bar that made it a lot easier to discover applications and navigate the operating system. Multitasking improvements and the graphical interface were a big leap from Windows 3.1 and the days of MS-DOS, but the interface was rather similar for Macintosh and OS/2 users at the time.
Windows 95 wasn't all about the Start button, though. Besides being a 32-bit OS, an important addition was support for long filenames, up to 250 characters. It sounds like a basic feature in 2015, but at the time it made naming documents a lot easier. Another big feature was the introduction of Plug and Play, to automatically detect and install hardware. While the process of Plug and Play has been greatly improved in more recent releases, Windows 95's implementation was often referred to as Plug and Pray thanks to the often unreliable device install process that resulted in IRQ conflicts and lots of driver fun.
Microsoft had other equally ambitious plans for Windows 95. A new Microsoft Network (MSN) application came bundled with a prominent icon on the desktop. MSN was designed to provide access to email, chat rooms, newsgroups, and the first WWW homepages through a dial-up connection. Microsoft charged a monthly fee to access MSN, and if you used it for more than three hours a month, there were extra charges. It was the early days of the internet and dial-up connections, and MSN now exists as a web service through various tailored apps or a browser.
Microsoft also introduced its first idea of syncing data between multiple machines in Windows 95. The My Briefcase aimed to sync files between a laptop and desktop machine, and in modern releases of Windows, it's all cloud-powered thanks to Microsoft's OneDrive storage service. Microsoft even introduced user profile support in Windows 95 to allow multiple family members to sign in and have their own separate profiles with links and applications. If you weren't happy with all the new features of Windows 95 then you could have purchased Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 at the time. It included the Internet Jumpstart Kit (an early version of Internet Explorer), theme support, and a number of system utilities. Subsequent updates to Windows 95 also introduced new features before Windows 98 arrived three years later to improve things even more.
Enjoy a brief look back at Windows 95 in the photos and videos below, especially Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer dancing to "Start Me Up." It's classic, just like Windows 95.
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Duke Nukem rocks!
This is a weird story. I'm sure there's someone out there running Win95... Probably some business that built it's own software and never felt the need to update it. Anyway I remember loading MS Office on my first PC running Windows for Workgroups. A thousand floppies later I had Word and Excel.
The article was timely for me. I dismantled my Win95 Zeos box last January. The carcass is still in my garage since I've been trapped by the pandemic.
I'm on the Windows 10 beta test 2nd Tier. I do miss Windows 2000 though. That was the best version in my opinion.
I do too. I have been a Technical Beta Tester for Microsoft since Windows '98 up to Windows 10. Also, a TBT for MS Office through Office 19. Plus, I was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 4 years.
What I run is Windows 7, Office 2013. Why? For me they have to most reliable features and are more easily converted to versions higher up. When I bought my new desktop it had Win 10, so I wiped the HD and installed Win 7 and Office 13.
I know that there are many large companies that are still using Windows 2000, including many US Government departments and many Corporations. It is basically the simplest and most reliable version of Windows. Plus, due to the sheer number of PC in use in these type of users, the cost of upgrading to the latest versions would be not only very expensive, but very time consuming, to say nothing of the time needed for training needed to bring the users up to speed with the new software. So most of these type of users are sticking with Win 2000. It also eliminates any problems with passing document to other departments in the company or government offices if necessary. I have had to help with these training sessions so I know how time consuming, and confusing, they can be.
Windows 7 was mostly solid. I've not had too many issues with Win10 and since I do IT work much of the time I have to be using and versed on what my customers are using - which ALL of them are running Win10 Pro. I have 4 O365 accounts! I admin 2 of them and only one is my corporate account which I'm thinking I might just drop before the end of the year. I only have it for Exchange email...
I didn't have too many issues with 10 at the time either. But, I was asked to be an Instructor at two local Community Colleges near Warrenton Virginia where I lived at the time for the Win 10 and the Office 16, as I had my own business in computer operation and data processing. So the students needed training on the new software, and the Com Colleges did not have the funding yet to buy the software to upgrade all their computers. So as I had the software loaded on my laptop, I could teach from that, and the students had to use the schools laptops that had the software installed on them. There were only 5 laptops available for the students, so the classes were very small in the beginning.
I started with one Community College and soon had 5 schools where I taught the software. As I was an Microsoft MVP at the time, was the only one in the area already had knowledge of the Win 10 and Office programs, I had a class every day of the week at one school or the other until the courses were finished.
As soon as the school District had the funds they bought the software for all their computers, and the classes were much bigger. At that point, I had to also teach the staff at all the schools, as well as the office staff at the City of Culpeper, Fredericksburg, Warrenton, Winchester and Manassas. I also did private tutoring for those who could not make the classes but needed to upgrade their skills with the new software for their job, or to get a job.