Windows 95 Turns 10 790
ColdGrits writes "It's hard to believe it, but 10 short years ago today saw the launch of Windows '95.
Here is an archive of the Washington Post's story on the day. As part of the launch, Microsoft paid $12,000,000 for the rights to use the Rolling Stones' song "Start Me Up" (containing the prophetic line 'You make a grown man cry'). "
Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA:This passage is especially amusing, since I gained most of my knowledge of Windows 95 through needing to reinstall it repeatedly on various systems.
Another gem from TFA: Yes...I vaguely recall IBM's OS/2...but Apple? No....I'm drawing a blank. ^_^
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:2)
Precautions... (Score:5, Funny)
These are called precautions? I'm going to tell my client that next time we're delayed on a release. And as far as testing, was that something that was new in software at the time?
...the same features we delivered seven years ago (Score:5, Funny)
The IE dev teams blogs (nay, boasts!) about tabbed browsing in IE7 -- saying nothing of the fact that tabs are years old.
MS brags and boasts about Monad, which is still vaporware, but it sure will be the best shell ever -- saying nothing of the fact that this has been available forever in *nix.
I'm sure we can come up with more. In the end, MS is very good at marketing. People just love their koolaid.
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:5, Funny)
Their solution is to have the shell make a huge tree of objects that call each other. The objects aren't text, you can't load them in notepad, and you can't pipe them like you can with UNIX. Instead you've got a pile of goddamn API's. Plus, these fucking things are objects, so you can call them and they execute code. The good guys will use them to dig out information that they want. The bad guys will examine them for buffer overflows.
What do Microsoft developers drive? Easy - a Pontiac Aztek. They love ugly cars just as much as they love ugly operating systems. "But you can go camping in it!" is their reply when you criticise their ride. I agree. All the bugs make you feel like you're stuck in the fucking woods without any toilet paper.
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever try to work with filenames containing spaces? Ever need to manipulate data that represents a graph or tree (other than a directory tree)? Ever need to manipulate a bunch of spreadsheets (including layout)?
I've done each of those in bash and in WSH and I infinitely prefer the latter.
Using plaintext when possible is a great idea that I support 100%, but for some things it just plain sucks. And as soon as piping objects is made easy (as MS claims to be doing with Monad), objects will become more desirable still.
Honestly, the *nix world is rediculously smug when it comes to these things. For ages scripting was way better under *nix, but in the past years it seems that MS is where all the progress is being made. They're still not entirely there, but they're gaining ground fast.
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:4, Insightful)
The *ix command line is what I miss most when I use Windows systems (which is most of the time, currently).
It takes a little getting used to, but it lets you do all the things you *think* you should be able to.
For example, using tr I can replace characters or strings in a file or text stream as part of a batch process. On Windows I'd have to write a script or a program to do that.
Another *huge* benefit is that you can do massive batch processes without depending on a GUI app supporting it. If I have a command line tool that converts TIFF -> PNG or whatever, I can do tiff2png *.tiff *.png and be done with it. Some GUI apps like Photoshop might be able to do the same thing, but it would take more time to set up, and I may not have an app with that capability.
Man pages are pretty-much opaque, and require a Man page themselves to understand.
That I'll agree with you on. I've never been fond of man pages, even though I can usually dig out what I'm after eventually.
There are a lot of situations where a GUI is preferable, but a powerful command line is a great tool to have at your disposal.
Another example: For a personal hobby project, I needed to make some tools to help me figure out how some text was encoded. I wrote some command-line tools using
I ended up doing a quick and dirty solution in Excel (quick and dirty being relative since I had to implement binary XOR in VBA =P), but if this were something I'd be using frequently I'd make a proper GUI app out of it.
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:3, Interesting)
Because once you're used to them they're _really_ fast to do stuff with, and they usually come with good, concise man pages explaining how to use them (much better then your usual Windows online help).
Man pages are pretty-much opaque, and require a Man page themselves to understand.
Uh, I dunno what man pages you've been reading but most of the ones I've ever read are very concise and tell you what you need to know assu
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:3, Funny)
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:5, Informative)
Oh really? Perhaps you should go get a clue about Monad [wikipedia.org]. If you have trouble reading, you can even watch a pretty moving picture [msdn.com].
Monad turns the command line into an object oriented environment where instead of having to do error prone parsing through text piped though app after app, you treat the output from one app as one or more
This is, in fact, far ahead of anything currently available on Unix or Windows. In fact, it's so far ahead of what is currently available it will take quite a long time to get all parts of the OS and the apps that run on top of it to fully support the concepts Monad introduces. It's pretty damn innovative, if you ask me.
Oh, and it runs quite well for vaporware. I've been running it for a couple of months now (in beta form) and it's pretty damn cool.
I'm sure we can come up with more. In the end, MS is very good at marketing. People just love their koolaid.
Ya, when you're making shit up you can pump it out like a champ.
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds a bit overcomplicated to me, really. At least with the error prone parsing through text piped through app after app, I'm at any point able to thow a tee in the script and send the output somewhere that I can visibly read it and interpret it. I can also take that output and modify it slightly and send it manually back through the next step in the chain to do some additional testing. I'm not sure that simply examining the properties of the .NET object affords me the flexibility.
I'd also point out that I personally disagree with a lot of this obsession over object oriented code in everything these days. In a short script with a defined start and end, there's no need for the obfuscation of object orientation. I hate it when I see a huge generic class included by default on every page of a web application, even though some pages may only use 1 (or even NONE) of the functions within that class. At that point it's just a bunch of uneccessary overhead. It begins to seem like developers get use to that style of $this->crap and they can't get out of it
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:5, Informative)
You can do this with Monad as well. I can simply send the output of any monad command directly to the console window, just like you would if it were text, and it will output it using a default text output mode.
I can also take that output and modify it slightly and send it manually back through the next step in the chain to do some additional testing
You can do the same with Monad. You can easily serialize the output from a Monad command, do with it as you will, and feed it back in... but usually it's not necessary.
I'm not sure that simply examining the properties of the
As far as I can tell, anything you can do with a text-based command line app can just as easily be done with Monad. Monad supports all the ideas behind text based interaction, but adds the ability to work with the output as objects as well.
I'd also point out that I personally disagree with a lot of this obsession over object oriented code in everything these days. In a short script with a defined start and end, there's no need for the obfuscation of object orientation.
I agree, and with Monad you don't *have* to take advantage of the object-based interactions. If you want just text, you've got it.
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:3, Insightful)
And yes it is innovative, just don't mistake it for a Microsoft innovation. (should also probably give props to BeOS messages as well...)
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:3, Insightful)
Monad turns the command line into an object oriented environment where instead of having to do error prone parsing through text piped though app after app, you treat the output from one app as one or more .NET objects on which you can execute methods, examine properties, and pass them to other applications for further processing.
This is, in fact, far ahead of anything currently available on Unix or Windows.
You mean like Perl? People treating a OO language like the second-coming of Christ. Geesh, sh
Re:...the same features we delivered seven years a (Score:3, Informative)
But... processes don't have version numbers. We assume that you mean the files containing the executables. We assume that you are running linux, and the gnu utilities.
ls -l -L --full-time $(which $(ps --noheader -c | cut -c 35-)) | cut -c 44-
Of course, you are going to want to restart the commands, so "ps -c" would not be appropriate, but I will leave that to you.
Also, to run this on a remote machine, add "ssh user@remote" to the front of the command.
30 l
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:5, Funny)
When I was at Apple, the phrase I heard often was "We didn't buy NeXT, we paid them to take over."
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it was Apple under Amelio who bought NeXT. Along with the purchase came a certain Steve Jobs who served Amelio in an advisory role. Amelio stepped down from CEO in spring of 97 and Jobs stepped into the Interim CEO position (iCEO). After a bit of that he signed on full time.
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:4, Insightful)
While Windows 95 may have reduced the GDI resources problem of Windows 3.x, I hardly think anyone could credibly claim that Mac OS had good memory management before OS X.
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:3, Informative)
What I think they're probably referring to is memory handles, however. MacOS's memory manager used a pointer-to-a-pointer memory allocation structure called a Handle t
Windows 95 Sucks MP3 - FUNNY! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:3, Interesting)
Four Score and Seven Crashes... (Score:3, Funny)
1/2 Score and 10 billion crashes ago, our programmers brought forth on this server a "new" program, conceived in PARC and dedidcated to the proposition that all software can be ripped off.
I'm too lazy to complete the joke and I think you get it by now anyway.
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:3, Interesting)
(Can't find a link, but I very clearly remember this bug.)
-Peter
Re:Ahh, nostalgia... (Score:4, Informative)
But they didn't deliver; they provided a stop-gap. (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft's older version of OS/2 was a 16-bit solution that wasn't all that competitive, but at least it had a real filesystem and an architecture that made a little bit of sense to someone with a comp sci background.
Besides, by the time Windows 95 was released, OS/2 had been an IBM product for over three years (OS/2 2.0, 2.1, and Warp 3.0 had already been released), and it had been almost completely rewritten by IBM during that time (new 32-bit kernel, new WPS desktop, new VDM subsystem, new WinOS2 subsystem, and new network stack).
NT was around then, as you say, and it had a good native 32-bit core, but it still used the Windows 3.1 desktop and had such poor support for DOS apps that many people couldn't use it effectively (at least for a few more years).
Re:But they didn't deliver; they provided a stop-g (Score:5, Informative)
Check out Andrew Schulman's "Inside Windows 95" some time. But the "on top" makes it sound like DOS was still in charge under the covers, which it wasn't - it's pretty much a pile of dead code and thunks by the time vmm32.vxd got its tentacles inside.
They did a pretty good job of making it backwards-compatible enough so folks could still most of the DOS and Win16 apps they wanted.
Re:But they didn't deliver; they provided a stop-g (Score:5, Funny)
Blue Screen of Death (Score:5, Funny)
How true... If those poor saps had only know what lie ahead.
10 sort years? (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe i am new here, but what other kind of year is there other than sort years
Re:10 sort years? (Score:3, Funny)
Or, of course leap years.
--
Evan
Windowsz? (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder when we'll see Lindowsz....
yadda yadda (Score:3, Insightful)
It failed.
But in the year of the Linux War, it became something greater: our last, best hope - for blinding stupidity.
Grow up Taco...Windowsz?
Re:yadda yadda (Score:3, Funny)
There IS no second "w" in Windoze!
What's your problem, Taco?
Re:yadda yadda (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:yadda yadda (Score:3, Insightful)
Spell Check (Score:2, Informative)
Another propethic line (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if it could make a "dead man come" [lyricsfreak.com], that would be really special.
Re:Another propethic line (Score:5, Funny)
That's reserved for Windows Vista: Keith Richards Edition.
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that Office 2000 is also 5 years old, that Windows 98 is 7 years old, or that Office 97 has been around for 8 years now. Ok, smart guy, how long has Office 2003 been out?
Windows 95. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows 95. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows 95. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows 95. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windows 95. (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? *cough* Windows 2000 *cough*
Much more stable that Win 95, far fewer requirements to reinstall, use of ring 0, ring 3 seperation , better memory management, NTFS and encrypted file system. (yeah, I know, many of these features started in NT, but NT isn't comparable to a desktop OS like Win 95, not even NT Workstation)
Re:Windows 95. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's completely ridiculous. There really weren't that many changes between NT4 and 2000. They added a few user-friendly bits like the device manager, moved some things around, added better backwards compatibility, and just gave it newer versions of directx, media player, etc.
What in the world do you think NT4 was missing that Windows 2000 had, that was so significant?
Re:Windows 95. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Windows 95. (Score:3, Interesting)
Something I have found really interesting since the win 3.1 to win 9x migration is that it seems everyone loved and loves the innovative Win9x menu set-up, and I REALLY hate it, having to click in the start and th
Re:Windows 95. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, pointed out. In terms of feature change as seen by a user (not developer) I think it must be:
- 3.1 to 95
- 95 to 2000
- 2000 to XP
- 95 to 98
Mind you, having looked at that now, I'm not sure whether 3 and 4 are the right way around. I never saw versions of windows less than 3.0 to be able to comment.Anyone else care to fill in the rest/correct me? How would it look if you just concentrated on functionality for developers rather than users?
Re:Windows 95. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Windows 95. (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw freakin' Windows 2.0 and I'm still aching. Imagine twm on a 4-colour CGA screen. But with bugs.
Man, the real revolution was the 2.0->3.0 transition.
The appearance of Windows 3.0 (of which 3.1 was a minor modification) essentially changed the very meaning of home computing. It was the first usable GUI system widely available for DOS-based PC. It was still significantly inferior to the Mac, but it looked quite pretty - especially compared to the indescriptible ugliness of 2.0. So people flocked from DOS, and discovered all that GUI goodness. Graphical applications ! Icons ! Multitasking ! Word and Excel for Windows ! Hell, WYSIWYG editors !
People (myself included) like to diss out Microsoft, but I do have some respect for what Windows 3.0 represents : Gates had the balls to bet the whole damn company on Windows, even though DOS and text-based apps were doing pretty well. It worked, but it could have failed miserably, and early versions of Windows were no encouragement.
Of course, as an added bonus to The Bilg, it killed off Geoworks Ensemble [wikipedia.org] and similar projects.
Thomas-
Re:Windows 95. (Score:4, Insightful)
Stability, though? It wasn't my experience that Win95 was stable at all. In fact, where Win3.x was at least learnably-unstable (you would learn that certain applications or actions were likely to crash or to crash Windows) Win95 was randomly-unstable, crashing in non-repeatable, unexplainable ways.
Windows Workstation NT 4.0 was the first Microsoft OS I used that could function as a desktop system for weeks at a time without crashing. I think that was the big leap forward in stability.
the nightmares are coming back... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the nightmares are coming back... (Score:4, Interesting)
As I recall Linux wasn't *particularly* easy to install at the time
Tonight on Action News! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tonight on Action News! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tonight on Action News! (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, I read this as "Details at 0x03".
Re:Tonight on Action News! (Score:5, Funny)
You must be fun at birthday parties.
We were all excited because..... (Score:2)
Man, we were so stupid back then. Accepting vendor lies like it was gospel. Wait a minute......
If Windows95 made you cry (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Its older than that (Score:5, Interesting)
I have one of the Alpha disks around ( one that was distributed within MS that I am 90% sure dates to 93, and I have one that dates to 1/1/94, I always will remeber that one because I thought shit these guys are working on NEW YEARS ????
14 1.44 floppy's (for the upgrade if I remeber right (maybe 13). The sad part was the last RC I got was SUBSTANTIALLY more stable than the Initial release was
I actually reverted to it until it expired
It was explaine to me by a buddy at MS (the one who got me the Alpha's and the Beta's , it was driver issues, that I wouldnt doubt, but it sure beat the HELL out of Windows 3.1
Re:Its older than that (Score:3, Funny)
Job ads (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Job ads (Score:5, Funny)
And 10 years of... (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking of the Stones... (Score:5, Funny)
"Under My Thumb".
*ba-dump-bump-ting!*
$0.12 a copy (Score:3, Interesting)
Mock it if you will, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd never owned an Apple, so I can't speak to what it was like to use one back then (were they using, what, system 6 at the time? I don't remember...), but while XP is more reliable, and I get a tremedous sense of "do it yourself" satisfaction with Linux (my primary laptop OS), I don't think I'll ever have as much pure fun as I did playing around with Win 95 when it first came out, warts and all.
I'll mock away. (Score:5, Insightful)
Win95 was terrible for games. None of my games worked with it. None! Not until DirectX 5 and 6 could DirectX be said to have matured enough for general use. Nothing really good came out until then, either. Quake was still something you'd "Exit into DOS mode" for.
As for the Freeware, most of it was dreesed up Win32s apps or NT apps now able to be run (thanks to Win95 implementing full Win32). The MS Plus pack was a good example of the sillyness of the era: IE 1.0 came with it. That thing sucked. People were desperate for uninstallers that wouldn't hose the system (cleansweep, etc, came out around then). And the memory managers for DOS still sucked -- keeping QEMM 7 around was much better than using DOS 7's emm386/himem.sys!
If you had 16mb of RAM, Win95 was noticably bitchy compared to Win3.1. You needed at least 32mb of RAM, and at least a Pentium 120 to really have it go decently. That was a top-of-the-line computer until fall 1996.
Thankfully, Netscape 1.x was available and 32-bit then. Plus you could run it just as easily on an Indy or DECStation or Linux
The best thing about Win95 was that it included its own 32-bit Winsock implementation.
PS: System 7 came out in 1990! By the time Win95 was out, it'd been updated to 7.5ish (7.5.1 came out in March, 1995; 7.5.2 in August, 1995). This was a pretty decent OS for not having real guts to it -- Quicktime, Applescript, PowerPC support (for the "new" PowerPC CPUs), Powertalk, and easy to add/remove TTFs. Windows just barely got the TTF part with Win95. Windows Media Player in Win95 didn't come close to Quicktime!
Mock mock mock mock mock mock mock
let me refresh your memory (Score:3, Informative)
Windows 95 was the platform I first saw GLQuake running under the 3dfx Voodoo - I can still remember my remarks cleary "holy shit this is awsome!" Sure the very first direct 3d game (monster truck madness - which ran in directx 3) was kinda crappy,
Re:I'll mock away. (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, bullshit. Windows 95 + Office was usable on 386s and 486s with 8MB of RAM (a fairly common machine in 1995).
Pentium 120s with 32MB ? That's a comfortable *NT4* machine - Windows 95 would be blazingly fast on such hardware.
Re:Mock it if you will, but... (Score:3, Informative)
I'd never owned an Apple, so I can't speak to what it was like to use one back then (were they using, what, system 6 at the time? I don't remember...)
Apple at the time was on System 7.5, and TFA has it wrong [byte.com]... True preemptive multitasking, protected memory, etc., didn't really arrive until OS X in the late '90s. (Anyone remember the failed promises for Copland [byte.com], of which only the interface facelift survived into the eventually released System 8?)
Byte Magazine, writing on the release of System 7 in 1
I never ran Windows 95 (Score:3, Interesting)
When Win95 was launched it heralded an age of "user-friendliness", which to me sounded too much like "dumb-downness". And besides, the system boasted features that were useless to me (Autoplay? Who cares! I know how to run things in my CDROM).
I boycotted Windows95. I never ran it. Of course I had to give in at one point, when most software required the new Win32. But that was in 2000, when I started using...Win98. And Linux. And finding that I spend more time in Linux day by day.
Now I use Linux as my primary OS, with a Win98 partition which I still keep around for games (works well enough for that - I think of it as a massive shared library required for games). But then again, I don't even play games that much any more.
Win 95 (Score:4, Interesting)
This is same as today. Windows 95 came, all the features that were there were all available in Apple's OS. Today, Vista will be released soon, Vista's features are already available in Apple's OS. But who do you think will make the money?
Re:Win 95 (Score:5, Informative)
No, this isn't true. I was a Mac user at the time, running System 7.5 on a LC, and whilst a lot of the UI was better on the Mac some of the internals weren't.
Examples? Well, two major ones spring to mind.
I actually switched away from System 7.5 to a PC running Win95. I refused to go earlier, because Win3.11 was so utterly poor. It's fair to say I missed things from my Mac's UI. It's equally fair to say I think my Windows bax at that time was a better computer.
I'm a Mac user again now, having re-taken the plunge at OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). Now the tables are turned, and the Mac is a drastically better box than the Windows machines I have to use. But had Apple continued down the MacOS route, I would never have gone back to them.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Win 95 (Score:3, Informative)
O the horror (Score:5, Funny)
More to come... (Score:5, Funny)
2010: 10 year anniversary of Windows Me
2011: 10 year anniversary of Windows XP
1015: 20 year anniversary of Windows 95
2020: 20 year anniversary of Windows Me
Start me Up (Score:4, Funny)
If you start me up I'll never stop
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
I've been running hot
You got me ticking gonna blow my top
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
You make a grown man cry
Spread out the oil, the gasoline
I walk smooth, ride in a mean, mean machine
Start it up
If you start it up
Kick on the starter give it all you got, you got,
you got I can't compete with the riders in the other heats If you rough it up
If you like it you can slide it up, slide it up
Don't make a grown man cry
My eyes dilate, my lips go green
My hands are greasy
She's a mean, mean machine
Start it up
If start me up
Give it all you got
You got to never, never, never stop
Never, never
Slide it up
You make a grown man cry
Ride like the wind at double speed
I'll take you places that you've never, never seen
Start it up
Love the day when we will never stop, never stop
Never stop, never stop
Tough me up
Never stop, never stop, never stop
You, you, you make a grown man cry
You, you make a dead man come
You, you make a dead man come
Can anyone figure out what the hell Microsoft Marketing was thinking when they selected this song?
Re:Start me Up (Score:3, Funny)
Windows 95 lyrics (Score:5, Funny)
Brought Windows home and tried to boot it up
But when I load it up
It says my memory is not enough
I've been running out
I need Some Extra RAM to fix me up
I have to cough it up
Open my wallet up, it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops
Its Windows 95
It's sucking up my drive
It makes a Pentium fly
But my PC is obsolete
I'll have to buy myself a brand new machine
Just stick me up
You suck me in then you got me hooked
There's so much stuff to buy
I need a new hard drive
I'ts gonna suck me dry
My 386, Don't have the speed
It takes an hour just to bring up the screen
Oh no
Woow
Yo Yo
Those mentioning OS/2 in a positive light... (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows 95 for all its issues was not as bad as people have made it out to be. First, MS did warn people that a fresh install rather than upgrade over Win3.x was advised. Second, the vendors like IBM did their level best to act like it was still the days of DOS/Win3.x or has it been forgotten that their Craptivas tended to use every freaking IRQ there was knowing that IRQ sharing was not remotely ready in that first release? Compaq, et al, had their own dufus-level driver and build issues.
Major corporations actually using it daily and not being able to take major efficiency disruptions did yeoman work bughunting and suggesting workarounds and fixes to Microsoft and some actually paid serious cash to Redmond for code access to work their own builds of it. Meanwhile people threw stones at those big corporations heedless of how much of their Windows headache was steadily being addressed by those corporations. To this day people still don't get it and still have a "tail wags the dog" mindset that the home and school are the real influence.
Nope. Business, where we all work, is where the PC market is guided along more than at home and the NT/2K touches in XP Home bear that out. I don't use a glitzy ego booster for Jobs at work, I use an OS that all things taken into account, is the best choice for my work. It offers things that our proprietary app writers find get their job done better than any other platform.
So in addition to hoisting a cold one to MS for a job well done in the end and congratulating them on ten years out from Windows 95, I also salute the corporations that adopted it in droves so long ago and all the work they and my fellow techs and coders did to fix things up. I was not and am still not happy about their basically selling beta code as finished product rushing it to market, but it did set the stage for a much easier desktop experience that only encouraged rapid personal computer adoption after years of doldrums and facilitated widespread Internet usage adoption to boot. If Apple or IBM had their way, never mind the Unix geeks, we'd have had personal computers that remained as inaccessible to the average user as what went before and not seen the renaisance that we did.
You make a grown man cry (Score:3, Interesting)
Eventually, I got it to work, although I'm not sure how, so I made an image backup just in case. The VP received his laptop, but then complained bitterly that it would crash on him every few hours. Yeah, well duh: it's Windows! What did he expect? Join the club. Ungrateful bastard.
To top it all off, some other VP, having heard of my success with the ThinkPad 600, came by later to have me fix his. Great. Well, at least I had that image backup, right? Wrong. It didn't work, even though his laptop was exactly the same model and revision number. I still have no explanation for this. I'd start it up after copying the image to it and it would have exactly the same device and registry problems that I had before getting it right. This kind of thing was never a problem on the Compaq and Toshiba laptops -- just on the IBM ThinkPad 600. I swore never to use an IBM ThinkPad again.
Fast forward to the present. Guess what kind of a laptop I have now? An IBM ThinkPad A21m. And I'm actually happy with it. So, what changed my mind? Simple:
Linux.
I just booted an old Pentium 100 laptop with 95.. (Score:3, Informative)
I just checked the stats on my relatively busy web site and saw that of the 16,640 Windows machines that visited last week 94 of them were using Win95. Just below that was NT with 42 visits and WIN32s with 10 visits. Oh, I even saw one single OS/2 visit..
"Windows 95 - It sucks less" T- shirt (Score:3, Funny)
Mac button (Score:5, Funny)
IT nostalgia (Score:3, Insightful)
I can finally say: "Not a single bit! I am glad it's dead. And I am looking forward for it's brothers to die too."
C:\NGRATLNS.W95 (Score:4, Funny)
What I find interesting about Windows 95... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is why everyone will be very interested in seeing how Windows Vista runs, because I think Microsoft will come up with a totally new look and feel for Windows XP's successor.
Re:launch song for longhorn (Score:5, Funny)
Here's every Coldplay song, ever:
I HOPE SOME GIRL WILL LOVE ME, BECAUSE I'M A HUGE PANSY
Re:launch song for longhorn (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ah yes... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:it's not dead.. it's a pity (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, check out nLite [nliteos.com], and also at the nLite forum, especially [msfn.org] this FAQ [msfn.org]. This is a free Win2k and XP customisable installer. You can use this to get a seriously stripped down install that should run on your old dogs. Worth checking out other parts of this site if you've got to admin Windows.
You UNIX youngsters crack me up. ;-) (Score:3, Funny)
It ain't pretty, but at least it's old!