Why Windows 95 Was a BIG Deal!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- It is the night of August 23, 1995. Everyone around you is excited for Windows 95. This is clearly a big deal! You got your JNCO jeans on, you brought your Game Boy with you because you have no idea how long this is going to take, and you and your friend are waiting in line at Best Buy with hundreds of other people, waiting for midnight to strike, because that is when the all-new Windows operating system will be available for purchase on store shelves. But do you even know why you’re here?
Microsoft got the whole world excited for Windows 95 with its retrospectively famous “Start Me Up” campaign. Its marketing was just incredible. It worked so well, thousands of people waited in line at many retail stores across the world to buy it, making it the most successful software launch in history. People knew that Windows 95 was an important milestone, but did they understand why? Yeah…but also, probably not. What’s really interesting about Microsoft’s product launch is that it was able to even mesmerize people that frankly didn’t really know what was going on. Today, we are going to look at the causes and effects of this great software phenomenon and explain “Why Windows 95 Was So Important.”
The seemingly everlasting influence of the Windows 95 operating system can really be boiled down to three things: brilliant marketing (arguably the biggest component), innovative features, and, just like many other incredibly successful things, timing. It’s honestly really easy to overlook Windows 95 as this revolutionary piece of software, even at the time. But keep in mind, that’s not the question this video is answering, but rather why Windows 95 was important. Being important and revolutionary are different things. But was Windows 95 revolutionary? Not really, or at least not as much as you’d think. Heck, its exorbitant amount of marketing actually brought it a lot of criticism, particularly from Apple users. Many of these people scoffed at the features that Windows 95 was boastfully advertising, and mockingly nicknamed it “Macintosh 87.” This is because they claimed that Macintosh did it first, almost a decade earlier, and they actually weren’t too far off. A new feature included in Windows 95 allowed users to name files up to 255 characters long, a huge improvement to the previous 11-character limit. But this was a feature the Macintosh had for over ten years, along with a similar looking GUI that used similar icons. I mean, if you really want to get technical Macintosh actually copied Xerox and Windows just copied it afterwards, but that’s a whole other video, but it didn’t stop Apple users at the time from giving Windows 95 some bad PR. Yeah, the whole “Mac vs PC” debate is a lot older than you might think. But Microsoft’s incredible advertising serves as a testament for why people still chose Windows 95 over the already existing Mac OS instead. Yeah, Windows 95 was similar to the Macintosh, but its marketing gave it a better personality.
Computing had an interesting role in the 90s, which was to be as relatable as possible, to transform from this niche community into something that everybody did. Computers were going to be as relatable and fun as cars or television, and Windows 95, in a lot of ways, was the one that took initiative on achieving this goal. Their commercials were upbeat, exciting, and appealed to the masses using pop culture references of the time. Their main focus was showing the operating system’s simplicity, and how much the user could do with such little effort. It was less of a convoluted piece of software and more like a person, when in reality, Windows 95 honestly wasn’t all that different from its previous version, Windows 3.1. With the way 3.1was marketed, people basically just saw it as DOS wearing a fancy outfit. Windows 95 also ran on top of DOS, only difference was DOS booted into Windows by default, so you didn’t notice it, and of course the ads wouldn’t tell you that. All this fun advertising excited people and encouraged them to go out and see what all the fuss was about, including those that were just getting into computers and had no prior experience with them. Consequently, many people weren’t even exactly sure why they were in line, but just knew that it was the start of something big, and that this product was going to soon enrich their lives in one way or another.
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NationSquid
haha, i do like it even though i'm not really into music
SHUT UP ABOUT BEATLES
@@MourningdovePlayerh412YT don't be salty to his opinion this is not twitter my guy
So i'm using a windows 95 virtual machine
I recently found out that Windows 95 "running on top of dos" was a misnomer. DOS was a boot loader of sorts. When WIN95 started it took control of everything and dos was demoted to a compatibility layer for things like old dos hardware drivers.
I remember when back in the 90s I would ask my father the permission to play with the delicate computer. Playing meant opening Microsoft Paint and drawing random sketches
I have similar memories as well haha! Thanks for watching! :)
Same with me in the early 2000s. Also went on the internet to play flash games on nick, cn and disney channel.
This channel is absolute garbage.
My favorite feature of Windows-95 was definitely the:
"files32.cat cannot be found. Insert the Windows 95 CD-ROM into the drive selected below, and click OK.
I'm pretty sure it's still there in the recent versions but it's an hidden feature. I don't remember using this since Windows XP...
:(
Same. Using Paint in 97-99 when I was in kindergarten.
Back in 1998 we had the family first computer. I'm from Colombia so having a computer was a big deal and my dad worked extensive hours as a taxi driver to be able to buy one. It came with win95 because it was february and Win98 didn't lauch yet. For me, it was a life changing experience and shaped my future as a an IT/electronics technitian. I was 10 years old in 1996, and i felt the 90's change to something different because of the tech revolution.
Wow, those were great experiences! I was like 4 years old and I grew up first experiencing Windows 98 SE back then in 2001, at that time my country (Paraguay) had actually very few machines with windows 98 but luckily I was able to experience that beautiful moment because my cousin had that PC. He used to have the SNES emulator with Super Mario Bros. 3 as well as Sonic & Knuckles inside the Sega emulator. And he also got Half-Life: Opposing force, one of the greatest franchise ever.
@@FernandoCastillo-og7ze Emulators really were mindblowing. They also kept old games in people's minds, when before people just got rid of their old consoles to buy the new models and the games got forgotten. DOS games also running on Windows was a big deal.
No body cares....
same
@@miket3258 get busy figuring the monitor.
The jump from the heavily dos-reliant 3.1 to 95 in terms of GUI (icons, start, and wallpaper) and user friendliess was much bigger than you are implying for people that experienced it at the time and played a very large role in its popularity. Also, that start up sound is still epic.
Yeah it's kinda crazy to downplay this.
I saw Win 3.11 and DOS in school. Getting a Win95 Desktop PC was so much different ans really a big leap in usability.
You didn't mention the main reason why Win took over Mac - it was open hardware compatibility (and therefore much more variety and lower overall prices). Win 3.1 was already growing fast, heck even DOS was gaining momentum before that. Just when Win 95 got really user-friendly interface, it all burst, but potential was always there.
Mac and Linux models have their strong benefits, but when it comes to general public appeal PC/Win is just better.
Yup, that lower price and open upgradability was part of why my dad went PC rather than Mac. (Though another was a hand-me-down IBM PC that Dad's brother gave us in '93, that might've been a decade old even then. We replaced it with a 486 PC in '94.)
And I'm no stranger to DOS or Windows 3.1. I was not quite 13 when Windows 95 came out. Our 486 PC had been running Windows 3.1 and DOS 6 before then, and 95 seemed like a natural upgrade. And it _was_ a big deal -- easier to use than 3.1, somewhat less crashy, and you could still restart in DOS mode if a game ran better that way. We even had dial-up internet through Prodigy, though I think we'd been running that in 3.1 already.
And yah, Linux was barely a blip back then. Version 1.0 of the kernel had only just come out in '94, and the few distros available in '95 were largely aimed at enterprise users and a few techie power users. And lots of enterprises were still running other flavors of Unix.
Indeed. Enthusiats fail to understand a product is usually aimed at broad market and tend to think everybody has their predisposition to work around it.
I also remember that a Mac computer cost a fortune outside of US and Europe back then (in a sense it still does). You could build many computers for the price of a single one.
That changes very quickly. Linux matured well, and currently you can simply install many windows only games on steam, and play them on Linux with one click, like on Windows. I think it's already like 80+% of Windows games working natively under Linux in Steam. Those which don't work, in most cases have problems with their intrusive DRM protection, and Linux won't allow such intrusion by 3rd party software.
Yes and also apple was at the low ebb of an extremely hazardous race to the bottom with hapless management, a hopeless product line and bloated, unfocused strategic direction - as you say, timings everything - take 97 as the examination point and jobs comes back in as iCEO, draws that famous little cube with the product line up in it and apples journey back to profitability begins.
Also, this piece, in a good way, has anerica as the central focus. Over here in England there tended to be at least a lag of 12-18 months when developments stateside took hold in Europe. It’s not hard and fast, you just knew that “new stuff” over “there” would take a while to get bedded in over “here”!
@@ohio By 1995 the majority of Windows PCs were NOT made by IBM.
Me with Windows XP in early 2010s: "How do you do, fellow swaggers?"
Pretty sweet! Thank you for watching! :)
Me with Windows 7 in early 2010: "Doing alright man!"
@@javelinmaster2 me with both: Ha
@@javelinmaster2 i miss Vista/7
@@someguywithmtndew5691 I use 7 exclusively
I'm a 96 baby and I totally agree with what you said about trends. I naturally have rose coloured glasses around growing up, but the computer to me then was amazing, even just to play Pinball or Minesweeper. I actually don't think my siblings and I even delved into the internet until later years, I mostly remember playing a lot of PC games. There's no one time that is perfect, but those memories of my siblings, cousin and I learning about using a computer and the internet in general are special to me. Honestly boggles my mind how far technology has come in so little time, from dial up to high speed internet, from landlines to portable mobile phones. Sorry if I went on a tangent at all 😅
Same! :)
In 1995 nobody cared about Apple Macintosh anymore.
Until the iMac G3 enters the picture three years later! :)
@@nationsquid in my neck of the woods.... mac was used for graphics and etc... pc was for gaming. At least how the argument went.
exactly..
@@nationsquid quite true, having lived through that era I remember this very well. Macintosh supporters back before that time can generally be described as zealots. You still run into some of them who are still around and are still the same way. Also, in the late 90s ordinary people became extremely excited about desktop computers. This is long before smart phones; lots of television advertisements trying to sell desktops to people that actually listed specifications. Never see that again
You very obviously have never worked in the print industry or else you'd know how stupid you sound making that statement. The majority of Mac business use has always been in the publishing industry, particularly magazines. What is now Adobe's creative suite has always been Mac's killer app (the app you buy a mac to use) and it wouldn't be until the mid 00's until the PC version of the software reached parity with the Mac. But by then macs were and still are well entrenched in that one niche.
The 90s were the best years of a lot of people's lives. Wish I could do it all over again. Great video. Windows 98 was my fav at the time. Miss these days.
It really is fascinating how certain decades have such a profound impact on certain people! Thanks for watching! :)
But the 80's were much more awesome with the music, big hair hotness, and Nintendo! lol
Win95 was my first OS too. So many good memories
Hey look, I am computing!
:D
I loved windows 98 second edition back in the day. But windows 95 really was when everything changed.
Love how you put Sonic as a 90s icon alongside MTV, Michael Jackson, The Mask and Terminator. Take that, plumber boy!
Haha! Thanks for watching! :)
@@nationsquid thanks for uploading. These videos always tickle my nostalgia.
Mario was more '80s than '90s.
@@jmal mario was still popular but every cool kid focused on the cool gang
I’m now a teacher. Blows my mind that my students (elementary school) are growing up on Mario games much like how I grew up on Mario games as a kid. Of course, it’s on the Switch now but it’s still Mario. =)
Win95 was groundbreaking: games looked great, the UX was fresh and I was a 16-yr old teen. It got me to decide to study computer science at a time "computers" were seen as the next big thing. "Study computers" was a recurrent term (though it makes no sense today for good reason) but it was enough to make me curious and I'm grateful for it. I'm also appreciative of how lucky I was with the timing of my birth: being a teen during the internet boom was probably one of the luckiest periods to be a teen. Akin to being a teen while blockchain tech is booming right now.
Anyone out there remember MS Encarta? :D
1998 was our first family computer. My god what an incredible time. It was installed with win95 and it was absolutely a game changer. It granted access to Internet. Our first email was sending an email to my uncle in Canada (we were from Pakistan). It was unreal to have instant communication and the future seemed so exciting!
Bro that was a time when my neighbors got a computer and they had PTCL phone. They bought a dial up modem and connected to the internet, we were chatting with random rooms in mirc. Nostalgic times.
I miss the old windows look. Sure I can sort of simulate it with stuff like Windowblinds, but it just isn't the same.
I do miss the old Windows looks sometimes too, but then I remember just how much Windows has improved since then! Thanks for watching! :)
It's the nostalgia in me that sometimes wishes that companies would make the UI of these old operating systems a theme in their newer versions. (Here's looking at you modern MacOS and Windows 11.)
@Kenneth Rogers I would love a Snow Leopard theme on the new MacOS. :)
To me Windows 7 will always be the best looking Windows ever. More beautiful than XP and faster than Vista. Perfection. Then Win 8 started to ruin things with those stupid tiles nobody wanted. But the more revolutionary surely was Windows 95 (even though it was a rip off of IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system that Microsoft criticized years before for being too complicated before embracing those same concepts (the start menu logic, the design, etc). But there's no doubt about it, Windows 95 was a revolution. I remember we were all crazy about it. Myself included. I'm not a fan of the Rolling Stones music but I can't argue with the fact that the Start Me Up commercial was indeed very effective. Windows 95 was in everyone's lips (except for the Mac devotees). Windows was cool again. And Apple had a hard time competing with them... until the iMac came along. Then it was the time for the Macs to be cool again too.
7 and xp were the best
As someone born in 2001, I am old enough to remember a time using Windows XP, before Vista was released. But too bad I'm too young to experience Windows 95, 98, or 2000 when they were new. Because I was either a baby ('cause XP was released just only 4 months after I was born), or I didn't exist yet. I really wish I lived in the 80's and 90's, to see technology evolve right before our eyes!
I used XP before Vista as well! I much preferred Vista at the time due to its brand new UI and Start search feature. Thanks for watching! :)
Me using dos and win 3.1 as a kid... whoa man, time flies :D Okay, these memories are from my father's PC... but my own first computer came with W95. I remember that "playing" that time means creating charts in excel, setting the screensaver, just exploring what a computer can do. Wrote my own stories in notepad/word, managed my files in folders, draw some awesome BMP in paint... Back in the day that was magic from the perspective of the analog world. Then the "advanced" games... like the first c&c was pure science fiction after tetris, prehistoric and stunt. And nowadays I'm working as an IT guy, making money from it. Sometimes still feels as magic, it amazed me as a kid and now I'm supporting my family from it. Also it's my hobby, got a bit old but still capable gaming PC that I use for work, serves me well in these covid home office times.
Just a fun fuct: Nowadays I love to play cities skylines and my son sits on my lap and laughs while we ride on one of the railway line of my city. So yeah, this W95 thing changed my life and still influences it every day.
@@luki8806 You've probably heard this from a lot of young music nerds, but I really feel like I'm born in the wrong generation! I really wish I was born in the late 80's or early 90's. I wish MS-DOS, 3.1 and 95 was a part of my childhood. The 90's really sounds like it was the best time being a kid.
But I'm still glad my childhood was good enough. As someone born in 2001, I still remember most of the late 2000's pretty well. I played games on my dad's XP machine, back in the days when Vista was still in development. Sid Meier's Civilization IV, (and later V when that came out) are games that me and my dad loved to play together when we just want to hang around. But I was really young back before Vista came out, like kindergarten days, so my memories are really fuzzy. But I do know it was XP, 'cause I remember all the sound effects it made, and that iconic blue Luna theme.
Windows XP is like the brother that was always with me, since we both came out in 2001. And of course, I was really upset back in 2014 when it was announced that Microsoft is ending support for Windows XP. But I still made my Windows 10 machine look like Windows XP, with a custom made Windows 10 version of the Luna theme. I wish it looked more accurate, because I really hate Windows 10's limitations when it comes to custom visual styles. But it's close enough to feel like home to me. Windows XP will never die to me!
@@Mickelraven I see no problem in here, I also wish sometimes to born 10 years earlier to be there when everything is started :) I was born in 1988, in the XP days I was in secondary school, still using W98 a lot. At the time I have a P2 machine that can technically run XP but it was a slow garbage compared to 98SE :) Games (and basically the full experience) was way smoother because of the lower requirements of the OS. Ahh civilization... I played the first on my cousin's playstation, but my father bought the second for me on PC :) Also 4 is a masterpiece but nowadays I love Civ6 :)
If you want to listen to great game music tunes, search for jazzjackrabbit 2 OST (back then music was the essential part of the development), also if you want some pure fun get the game as well. It's still a masterpiece ;) But yeah, the OS sounds are also in my head including W95, 98, 2000, XP and so on :)
I'm also glad with my childhood, we have an atari clone, a NES to play mega man and super mario (the original) and duck hunt with a light gun, but PS and PS2 was the high end gaming. Like just imagine playing devil may cry at 60FPS on PS2 on a CRT. Our mind was blown.
XP was cool, but as a usable OS it was after SP2. Before that it's really unstable and full of bugs, but after that it was a great OS.
Also the main difference that back in the days there was much more social interaction compared to nowadays. Not in the "real word" sense, but just imagine playing a game and copy save files to floppy disk (or zip them to fit on more disks) and move to my friend and just continue the game :) Or go into "console centers" where bunch of PS and sega megadrives and similar machines were piled up and you can play with your friends for your launch money... We spent all of our piggybank money on that, playing house of the dead coop with light guns and having local tekken 3 tournaments after school.
No smartphone, internet was only after 18:00 (because it was waaaaay cheaper), a phone call means instant disconnect, downloading an mp3 file was about 2-3 hours. Also if you have a friend who had a CD burner... he was the ultimate king. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I have clear memories from it and I loved every minute of it.
Also it's feels wierd that someone started on XP... makes me feel old as hell :) But still a gamer, go a PS4 pro and a switch as well, and now a money to buy every game I want to... just the time lost. Even to list my backlog could took up hours ;)
@@luki8806 I agree with you, because despite the internet existing by the time I was born, I still feel like I'm one of the last children to grow up in a pre-internet era! Probably because our parents were smart enough to think that the internet isn't the best place to hang around all day for 7-10 year old kids. Where I lived, none of my classmates had full internet access until the 2010's rolled around, when smartphones became more common. Of course, we could always use our parents' computers, but we still socialized on the school playground! And we still had a time limit for how long we get to play. I got to play for only one hour a day, but got extended to two hours the more I grew up. And the time limit just went away as soon as I reached my teen years. Online gaming was a luxury for kids my age back in the day. We still played multiplayer game locally. On the PS2, Wii and best of all, Pokémon on the Nintendo DS! Only the rich kids had an XBOX 360 or a PS3, and I didn't get my own PS3 until a year before the PS4 launched, 2012 that is.
In my early childhood, we had a VHS player, so I'm still old enough to know what that is. Lots of memories watching old Disney movies and other cartoons with my brother on that thing. My brother still has the same VHS player. I also remember having an .mp3 player, when my Nokia dumbphone didn't have enough storage to have more that a few .mp3's. I always had to ask my dad to get me more songs. And since he's a Gen X, he has definitely influenced my music taste, and I'm glad he did. Because pop music is full of shit in my opinion! Rock and metal all the way, baby! :D
But as someone who loves retro stuff, from eras before I even existed, I'm gonna become a gaming collector. And now that I'm 20 years old, I've moved out of my parents, and I received one of the best gifts I've ever got from my dad. It was his old Nintendo 64! I loved playing Mario Party on the N64 with my dad and brother, and since my dad knows how much I love old video game consoles, I was really thankful he gave me his old N64 when I moved out! My brother took the VHS player, and I took the N64.
This is my gaming hardware collection so far. I have a PS2 Fat (AKA, my favorite gaming console of all time), PS3 Super Slim, PS4 Slim, Nintendo 64 (with Expansion Pak), Nintendo Wii, New Nintendo 2DS XL, and a 2016 ASUS laptop (i5). I am gonna get a gaming PC eventually, but I have to get a job first (I've graduated vocational school), so I can save up for PC parts. And I'm also gonna hunt down a PS5. I used to an original XBOX, but my mom gave it away (without my consent). And I also had a Nintendo Switch, but gave it away since I barely ever played with it, and didn't find any games that interested me. It is said that SSB Ultimate is one of the best games on the console, yet I barely touched it. We have different tastes. I sold my Switch for a 2DS XL, because I wanted to play DS and 3DS games again. Proves newer doesn't mean better. 3DS > Switch. If there's a dream retro console I have right now, it's the SNES!
In the end, I had really fun talking to you! Talking to someone who is also a Gen Z is always nice small talk and relatable. But talking to someone who is a part of a different generation is always fascinating to me. Because I get to hear their point of views, and their side of the story. And Gen X'ers and Millennials are some of the most fun people to talk to. When my dad is telling something from his childhood, I'm always listening. According to him, he had a Magnavox Odyssey in the 70's. It is one of the coolest pieces of technology in gaming history!
Because I love retro stuff, my favorite video game of all time is Undertale! Despite releasing in 2015, I love its 8-bit/16-bit art style. And I didn't play it until March of this year. I remember it was a very popular game, and somehow I've managed to avoid any sorts of spoilers. Playing Undertale for the first time was an experience I'll never forget! Greatest video game of all time! :)
The biggest point missed? Windows 95 brought wintel users from 16bit to 32bit computing. A massive change.
Windows 95 was a phenomenal upgrade to 3.1/3.1.1. As both an Apple and PC user at that time - W95 brought parity between the two platforms, and with better software availability… Wintel became my pre-eminent computing platform for the first time. Not until 2011 did I switch back to Apple.
I remember the library at my high school having Windows 95 on it's computers and shortly before I graduated they upgraded computers to more modern machines... this was in 2011
I guess you grew up in a small town as well?
My doctor's office I used to go to had pretty much all Win95, Win98SE and Windows 2000 PCs until the softwares that they used were unsupported and they got newer machines
This was between May 2012 and November 2014
I started with Windows 3.1 and 95 just blew me away as a kid, the GUI was massively improved and it seemed to run all my games and programs much more efficiently overall. The startup and logoff sounds still hold nostalgia for me as is the whole aesthetic of the OS.
Don't forget when netscape, aol and etc sued microsoft for bundling Internet Explorer making those paid for browsers obsolete.
I may just have a video on that coming out in the near future! :)
@@nationsquid lol silly antitrust laws
Well, as I recall, there was a point. Outlook Express was bad on many levels for email and internet explorer was likewise pretty bad. There wasn’t the means to “give away” software products and expect to stay in business. So, Microsoft including the applications in the OS that comes with a PC means a high bar to convince people to come over to your product. In time, IE and outlook were so problematic that freeware browsers and email programs started to gain a following.
@@qdllc well ya it was at first but my dad was so happy to not have AOL and paid minutes and bs... i remember people scalping from peoples mailboxes for aol disca
@@qdllc Why would OE been "bad" for email? It had good MIME and charset support, UTF-8, custom folders and rules to move the mail around them... and it was free.
Computing and the Internet was so exciting and full off possibilities back then. Great time to join tech and ride the wave. Things have got better and faster, but there hasn't really been anything new or ground breaking since then
Now we have something groundbreaking: the AI.
u keep me entertained for hours man. recently they gave us tablets in school and in each break i take my headphones and listen to vid after vid... well done!
The startup music at the beginning, gave me goosebumps. 😊
I am born in 81. Got my first computer in the beginning of the 90s. Me and a couple of other nerds ran a BBC in a friends basement and we all had modems. Internet really killed this. I remember when I saw internet for the first time realizing this will be the nail in the coffin for the BBC. But, we embraced it and never looked back. :)
The nostalgia is real. Windows 95 and that whole era was my first dive into the internet as a kid and it was really exciting at the time. Access to so much more information, chatrooms to talk to people from all over the world, it was all new and cool. I miss a lot of things from the mid-to-late 90's.
The main thing I miss from Windows 95? Hover.
That was a neat little game of early 3D, sad they didn't bring it back on Windows 98 on.
Or "the Hall of Tortured Souls" hidden in Excel 95. 👀
Thanks for watching! :)
Oh man, I love Hover!
Too bad it's only got 3 levels that repeat over and over again, but it was *3D!*
I ascend to another plane of existence every time I hear that startup sound.
"It is now safe to shutdown your computer"
Thanks for watching! :)
Without any doubt, this is one of the best videos explaining what Win95 was all about. The GUI was so awesome. I started to use computer wind DOS 3.3 was the dominant OS. I used W311 and suddenly the Win95 GUI and Netscape fired the computing lives of all of us. Thank again for this wonderful video!
This channel is pure nostalgia bait…..
And I absolutely love it, you glorious bastard.
Another major accomplishment that Windows 95 succeeded in was the revolution of 3D accelorated graphics/gaming by being the first OS to introduce Direct X.
Absolutely! Before that, you mostly had the NeXT that did that, which was incredibly expensive at the time. Thanks for watching! :)
4:05 no, no, no. People didn't chose W95 over MacOs because of marketing. People chose PC or Mac first, then they chose an operating system. And W95 was much better looking than W3.1+
my aunt was 14, when got her first computer. I was one at that time. My mom was working hard and had to leave maternity leave earlier. While she was working, my grandma, my aunt and my uncle took care of me. I would cry my eyes out while mom was leaving for work. They would put me on the computer and I learned how to play games. Super Mario dos was my first game ever. :) Later I played mini golf and ski game on Windows 95. It was hard for me, but at the same time, it was a great experience. The 90's were really a perfect time to live. You had enough technology to live and enjoy life, but also it did not interfere with your socializing or psyche
Congratulations, your channel is now is certified as "Video i would totally watch when eating instant noodles, and Video i would totally choose in Family Room's TV"
I am so flattered to hear that!! Thank you so much for your support! I have more content coming your way soon!! :)
My experience with 95 was definitely a mixed sack. I did love its simplicity in letting me get online, but the freezeups, GPFs, IPFs, and BSODs left a bitter taste in my mouth that didn't really fade till upgrading to XP.
As someone who is dyslexic during the late 80s and early 90s, Windows 95 was a big deal for me, because for me before Windows 95, there was a command prompt that I had to type to start a game or any program that I couldn't remember or when I did, I always misspelled it.
So seeing a physical icon that I could double-click without having to type was a game changer for me.
I was too young to remember Windows 95 since I began immersing myself in the world of computers in Windows XP's heyday in the late 2000s. But I remember knowing how big of a deal it was and how it wasn't too different to Windows XP and 7. Now if you ask me, my parents witnessed Windows 95 and 98, my mom has floppy disks she used to save her college work and I like to hoard technology from the 90s and 2000s to remind myself of how much things have changed since the beginning of my existence (which was just a few years after the release of Windows XP).
I had zero idea what was going on but when I saw the "Start" button I figured out...start here.
Within a few months and no outside help I really got the hang of it.
Six months later i was on Usenet giving tech advice!
Windows is more user friendly than Apple ever was. This is why Windows won.
I considered apple more user friendly up until windows 95. Pc having a lower entry price along with familiarity having already been popular with the office market and the first people to probably have a pc at home are what I credit MS success too
They never actualy compete, because they never could run on the same computer.
I was born in 1963. I grew up totally analogue until my last year of high school, when dad brought an Apple //e home from the office. My university had a UNIX mainframe, with terminals in most buildings, and the students got accounts. I got my first PC in 1992, a 386 from a friend, running Windows 3.11. A couple of years later I got a Pentium with Windows 95. I knew how important 95 was, but Norton Desktop on my 386 had already had many of the features, so not everything was new. (This was back when Norton was good. 😅) I've had PCs ever since.
I'm glad I grew up in analogue times though. In many ways, life was indeed better back then, and I still miss those times.
Between Windows 95 in August, the PlayStation in September, and me being born in October, 1995 was a big year!
Anyone notice the Y2K manifesto at around 6:43?
Your video really took me back. My mom knew all the MS-DOS commands, but I refused to learn them, just in time for Windows 95. I remember the "World Wide Web," as it was called then, really started to blow up in 1996. EVERYONE had two telephone lines so you could be on the Internet and still receive phone calls. I had a friend named Paula who bought a new desktop computer around that time. I asked her if it had online capabilities. "No," she said. "I don't see online really taking off." Honest to God, she said that.
oh great, another mouse pusher.
10:58 I've always felt this way about the 90's. I've always said they could look dated but actual at the same time. Some late-90's stuff still feels fresh, whether it is music, films, photos, etc.
That's called 'classic'
During my early childhood the only computer we had in the house was an MSX 2, but when we finally DID get a pc it was an old second hand 486 running Windows 95. It was the first time I could routinely use a windows computer. I had seen PCs running Dos or windows 3.1 at friends or family, but I never really got to use them. Played so much Doom and original C&C on that machine, it was awesome. Funny how an old machine with a 13 inch screen could make us so happy as kids.
I miss playing habbo hotel and aol chatrooms lol. I think habbo hotel is still a thing but its not the same.
I remember AOL as well! Cool to think that it is still around!
Oh my God AOL was the shit...😂the Discord of our time
I remember AIM most of all.
I do NOT miss AOL chatrooms. Most of the ones I were in were filled with perverts and wannabe hackers.
@@fergalstackstreams ASL? lol
One of the best things about Windows 95 that has been slowly downgraded and taken away in future versions of Windows was its configurability. You could go into the settings and change every colour in the UI to your liking! From XP more and more of the UI was replaced with bitmaps which you then had to use something like Windows Blinds to replace (and there are 1000s of them in XP!). UI designers of 3rd party applications and websites got lazy or never came to know about System Colors so you could end up with your custom white text on a hard-coded white background for example. Then by Windows 8 they got rid of the feature from the UI and hid it away in the registry - as by then it even caused conflicts in explorer itself!
I like that Windows 95's features lasted so long in Windows, but those features ought to have been upgraded, not downgraded or taken away! Sadly the mentality now seems to be "Keep it Simple (Keep it) Stupid" rather than "Give the user the freedom and power to choose how they want it".
Totally agree; there's a place for an OS that allows users to actually change stuff; PCs are becoming more niche.. the tablet, mobile phone, chromebook-esk machines can be simple, stupid, save it for those machines which the average Jo uses. I'm using a desktop/full laptop; give me an OS where I have some control and the file system isn't hidden away.
I still use Windows the Win95 way.
It might be superficial, but this is why I hate modern windows. They keep making everything uglier and harder to customize. At least Vista looked nice.
Microsoft and Apple are driven by money, and by making something configurable it costs much much more developer's work and money (e.g. you have to maintain backwards compat when developing new features), and it's only for how much, maybe 1% of users who like tweaking things.
If you need configurability, use Linux. Today when almost all applications are web-based, Linux does great.
@@iirekm Microsoft's developers were driven to just try and make the best product they could and were left a lot more just to get on with it back in the 90s. That's how they had the freedom to sneak in a couple of weeks work on turning the 3D chart engine in Excel into a 3D navigatable Easter Egg where you could see the photos of the developer who made the application. I put it to the industry that far more weeks are wasted now on programmers having to justify and document what they're supposed to be just doing just so that non-technical managers can justify to their managers where the money for the project is going. 2 weeks developing a feature that no one knows about is 2 weeks far better-spent than 2 weeks of meetings of having to justify your employment because one can actually learn from those 2 weeks of experimenting with code which in turn can lead to a better product.
I've used Linux on a mobile that was supposed to work on Debian. It was an unintuitive nightmare of sudo this, sudo that, sudo woodo, just to try and install a browser that wasn't Chromium and ultimately it failed with no meaningful error message to explain why. The phone just abruptly crashes and restarts with no explanation as to why and from what I understand, no one has been able to get it to make phone calls running Debian anyway!
My first computer was a 386 with 24mb of memory and a hard drive with around 100mb, which was enormous at the time.
I paid the equivalent of
$ 4000 US dollars for it, in 1991. It wasn't brand new, but almost.
It came with a drive card upgrade, so it allowed me to expand from 3½ floppy disk to CD roms (not a CD burner, as they become available way later.) when they become available at a reasonable price, and add another hard drive if I ever wanted to.
The computer came originally with Windows 3.1.
Good memories, Windows 95 also came in a floppy disk set of (if my memory serves me well) of 12 floppy that you had to insert in order to install it.
CD rom was a huge improvement because when the installation froze at disk 10, you had to start everything all over again, and it happened often.
I still have my email address that I created at the time, and I still use it a lot because it only has 4 letters, and it's easy for people to get right. It's 35 years old this year (2024)
“waiting for midnight to strike”
my clock striking at midnight the moment he said that:
I grew up on Windows 95. Turning 30 this year. Man how time flies.
I remember all of this, exactly how you described it. Great video! I was a computer geek in high school and a graduated in 1995 so this was all very exciting. I have a had a very successful career in technology and it was really neat to grow up during this time period. I still marvel that I use that start button ever day all these years later.
Windows 95 started my love affair with computers. I was 15 and I just knew that it would be my life. At night after school I worked in my dad’s friend’s computer repair shop. I would take a customer’s computer off of the broken shelf, read the work order and start troubleshooting. It was a challenge, but at the same time very easy. I ran circles around the shop owner. Fast forward to today where I have several Microsoft certifications and an extremely rewarding career. I’ve worked in several different industries, most recently in healthcare. Without the catalyst Windows 95 was in my life, I wouldn’t have what I have today.
No body cares....
@@user-pq6mr6op3p thanks for your input.
@@nathanhopkins8780 stick it up your COM port.
At the risk of sounding "old' I was an early bird when it came to PC's and Microsoft. I put out a small fortune for my first PC in 1993. I started with Windows 3.0, soon after, 3.1. By the time Win 95 hit the market I was an "experienced" computer geek. I remember that when it came out it was something I had to start learning all over again.
First big difference: I didn't have to type "win" in DOS for it to start up.
As big a deal as it was, I still was faced with the "Blue Screen of Death" quite often.
But it was a great time to be a computer geek!!!
I remember having computer classes in school that one year later were completely outdated. The pentium had broken the 100MHz line and Win95 was the first graphical interface you actually used as a base. Win 3.11 was only started if you needed to run specific apps, other than that shit was done in the DOS CLI outside of windows.
Things moved insanely fast from there for an entire decade. Your three year old computer was hopelessly outdated. Today I run the same mobo and cpu for at least 6 years and that's perfectly fine. I'm still rocking a GTX 1060 6GB that's almost 6 years old as well and even that works OK with new games. That was unthinkable 20 years ago. Sure, it's still being used because of the gpu shortage and prices, but just the fact that it does still hold up somewhat is amazing.
I did remember that when I was a kid, my household skipped 95. DOS and 3.1 were perfectly fine and that new OS has a ton of bugs, but my dad had a 95 in his office and I would play games there from time to time on free days. Still a great startup sound which in my opinion still has yet to be topped. Eventually the household adopted Windows 98SE, where by that point most of the glitches got patched out. Everything that 95 introduced, only better.
I remember using one of these in the early 2000s as a toddler playing Arthur, brings back many memories
I remember way back in the day, 1995, my mom coming home from work (she worked half time in those days) and asking me to come to the car, she had picked up some big and heavy boxes, i was 10 years young, i love computers, always have been into them, and when i saw what was on the boxes, i went nuts, Olivetti personal computer, and right under it, in cursive text, "with windows 95 and internet explorer", it was a so called "internet ready pc" that came with dial up modem and ethernet jack pre-installed, with a 15 inch crt monitor that sat on top of the case! Man, this pc changed the whole houshold! Everybody wanted to get on this pc, even my friends when they came over! Until we got broadband, this was it, "high speed" internet (250kb down) was insanely fast, compared to dial up, 4 sure! I miss those days! I also remembering my dad telling me i spent a bit too much time on the pc and he has found the ability to set a password, i booted up the pc and i saw this box with his name and a blank password box with the buttons "ok" and "cancel", i took the mouse and clicked "cancel" and i was in! He was stunned, he asked me "how did you do that?" and i said, you just click cancel XD
Windows 95 is a bit before my time (I was 7), but Windows ME was the first OS I shared a home with! I loved playing around with MS-Paint, the Pinball game, and all of the themes/screensavers it had.
I'm mainly a Linux user now, but I keep a Windows XP VM on my desktop for all the old memories~
I was working tech support for a product my company provided in 2013. It was basically a program that just syncronized data between two platforms. So one day a customer calls in and says the program isnt working and after asking him to go through the usual stuff i have to remote into his computer to look around a bit. To my absolute horror this turns out to be a machine running Windows 95, in 2013.
"Plug and Play" on Win95 was often called "Plug and Pray," as it crashed all the time especially in the early days
I was born in 1990, and I first learned how to use a computer around 1996, on a Windows 95 machine at my dad's office. Paint and Solitaire taught me how to use the mouse, and in fact I only know how to play Solitaire because of Windows lmao. I have lots of fond memories of using the system, which I later had in my own bedroom at around 10 years old.
I remember when 95 was just getting ready to release. There was a fire at a major memory manufacturing plant, causing memory prices to increase dramatically.. 95 recommended 8 meg of ram, a big increase over windows 3.11. I spent $1600 for a 16 megs just before 95 came out - within a few months the supply issue was fixed and my investment was worth a couple hundred bucks... Fun times back then, little internet mainly BBS's, not the s-show we have now...
Windows 95 and the first iphone launches are two milestone events in the last forty years.
I had played with computers since l was a teenager but 95 was so fast and easy to use my girlfriend at the time had it.
It inspired me to get a PC and windows 98.
And the first iphone was amazing like a steamlined windows 95 on a phone.
I remember this vividly. I was excited and attended the midnight launch
It was if anything the first time Windows pulled comparable to the Mac in terms of “you can turn this on and virtually anyone can figure out what to do with this”. It made the Mac OS if anything look longer in the tooth, and when factoring the cost benefits of the PC market the Mac premium prices suddenly seemed to provide less value than before. (It’s one of the reason Apple was in deep trouble till Jobs’ return 2 years later)
It was also MINDBLOWING in 1995 to have a Weezer and Sheryl Crow video included on the installation software
My home use of Windows 95 was very brief. I had gotten a Packard Bell 486dx 66MHz with 8MB of RAM and 800 MB hard drive running Windows 3.1 as a high school graduation present in May of 1995. I had gotten the Windows 95 upgrade for Christmas later that year. As this video states, the marketing for Windows 95 blew up everywhere, and I thought I HAD to have it. I now had a cosmetically different GUI from what I had before, a much slower computer, and no new features that were any benefit to me. Less than six months later, I ran my restore disc that came with my PC and started using Windows 3.1 again. In 1997, I bought a Gateway Pentium II 300GHz 64MB of RAM and a 10GB hard drive running Windows 98. Seems like Windows 98 was just Windows 95 ver2.
I was only 4 years old in 1995, so the only thing I remember about Windows 95 is my dad using it for his accounting practice, hearing that pretty startup music either in our basement or at his office (for anyone making hoary jokes about boomers "not understanding technology," I'd like to point out that my dad is the most computer literate person in my family and had been for a decade and a half by the time I was a teenager). I wasn't using a computer regularly for another two or three years, and even then it was mostly to play CD-ROM games.
Gosh dang, two actors from FRIENDS making a how-to video on Windows is the 90's-est thing I think I've ever seen, except maybe for the cover of that "Guide to the Internet" with the kid surfing the keyboard.
All this talk about Windows 3.1 reminds me of the time I used my grandma's computer in the late 90's, where she had that as her OS. She had TabWorks installed after she got it to make using the computer both a lot more visually appealing and easier to understand. Then when she had to get it fixed, the tech she worked with uninstalled it because "it's not authorized Microsoft software." He wasn't even a Microsoft tech, just some guy running a PC repair shop. Then we got Windows 95 after a bit and holy moly was it way better.
I consider the 90s the golden age of personal computers thanks in part to the world wide web. Sales went through the roof. Computer mega stores were everywhere.
I was a bit too young to get to experience the 95 craze. In fact, I was born the exact day 95 was released. Now I'm a programmer. Clearly that must mean something.
I would wager the person who created this video was not old enough to be a serious computer user during 1995. Most computer users were amazed that Apple was still in business and we were not looking for a "Mac-like" experience on a PC. PCs were the dominant platform at the time primarily due to software availability. If your first experience with a Mac was an iMac, circa 2000, you really won't be able to understand what it was like in the early/mid 90s. I don't remember *any* Macintosh advertising from early/mid 90s. No one I knew had or wanted a Mac and you could not run "serious" software on a Mac. Windows 95 was HUGE because it masqueraded as a single operating system. Up until then, PCs ran on DOS and then Windows 3.0/3.1/3.11 ran over DOS. You could setup your Autoexec.bat file IN DOS to automatically start Windows 3.x on power up, but DOS booted first, and then Windows. PC programs were designed for DOS or Windows. If you wanted to run a DOS program while Windows was open, you had to close out of Windows and then run your DOS program. Even though Windows 95 ran on DOS, it all took place "behind the scenes" and the vast majority of users were not aware that Windows 95 ran on DOS. Windows 95 did indeed have an amazing and extensive marketing campaign, but the true marketing genius had already taken place. Microsoft had already previously convinced virtually all PC users that they needed TWO OPERATING SYSTEMS -- Windows 3.x on top of MS-DOS (also produced by Microsoft). The primary reason most people ran Windows was to run Microsoft Office. It's beyond brilliant from Microsoft's standpoint. Never before and never since did so many computers run TWO OPERATING SYSTEMS. The reason people stood in line at Best Buy to get Windows 95 is because they knew they would never need to use a command line operating system (DOS) in the future. I hate to say it but you really missed the point on this one and it was obvious to many people at the time. Basic computer users never could wrap their heads around DOS and they asked Microsoft to please take their money so they wouldn't have to deal with it ever again. Edit: I almost forgot about multi-tasking. That was a huge benefit that most people could understand and which DOS could not do.
I still remember how clunky Windows 2 and 3 were - yet, I got used to them. Win 95, on the other hand, with its "Plug and Pray" spitting out that evil BSoD all too often took some getting used to. Not too long, but enough. I didn't get into Win 95 until the C release because of all the "horror stories" I heard about software and hardware compatibility issues. But, once I was finally into 95 and using it, I liked it. Win 98 was definitely a big step up from 95, and I switched to that a lot sooner than I switched from 3.11 to 95. But with XP being such a pig when it first came out, I didn't jump from 98 to it until after SP1 came out. Ah, the 90s - glory days of "frontier" computing, a time when one could still make good coin being a tech nerd...
I never used windows 95, but recall a, b and c versions as they got the bugs out of it. I used windows 3.11 for workgroup at home and windows NT4.0 in my office. I went to windows 98 at home upgrading to Windows 2000 and then XP, 8.1, finally, windows 10. I started in 1992 with DOS 2.2 and then DOS 3.2. Very good article about windows going over DOB.
I got on the internet with DOS and trumpet winsock and a 56K modem. I was doing this for a living, but it was very rough getting on the internet them.
completely agree that the 90s were divided into two eras. I think 1988-1995 was it's own era, and 1996-2002 was another. 2003 felt different. so did 1987. it's so weird how two people can feel the same distinct differences. we must both be exactly 40 years old. lol
People were proudly displaying their computers in the living room like a piece of expensive furniture back in the mid-late 90's lol
I was 8 in 1999. P.c seemed so magical and futurustic to me as a kid lmao. All that infornation, all that music. Games and education. The future seemed awesome. And now we are here, in this kinda awful future.
This remembered me of our old win95/98 pcs we had back in the day. The screensavers were very nice. We also had an old xp guy where my brother and I would play a tone of MAME32. Good times!
Great Video... I was pretty excited back then. From Windows 3.1 Shell-like interface 95 did really evolve to an OS, even still sitting on top of MS-DOS...
The other big dividing line was the introduction of broadband internet. To be finally rid of the hassles of phone line based internet. You could operate your computer without having to worry about getting kicked off the internet if someone in your house made a phone call.
I got my first computer in 1995 and it came with Windows 3.1. When we were getting the internet in 1996 we got the computer upgraded to Windows 95. It was SO much better and easier to use. Also it made using the internet way easier to.
Windows 95 + IE + Napster = pure addiction in my late 90's.
I miss the time I first open my new pc and see that logo. 90" was my favourite period of my life as a kid....
I had the first version of Win95 that I had buy Internet Explorer separately for $20. Then later it was included. Then the lawsuits came from other web browser companies saying it was an unfair practice.
I was the only person I knew out of all my friends and family who used the Internet. Imagine that now? 😆 win95 was my first experience of using a pc. Having a pc and using the Internet was special. It was like being in a small club of people who were at the leading edge of something new and exciting. The Internet was like the wild west, unexplored, fascinating.
I miss those days.
Honestly windows 95 is so nostalgic to me that i want to get an old windows 95 pc just for fun. I miss those days.
We skipped 95 completely. Had 3.11 and 99 or so a new pc with 98.
But I could experience it at a friend's house.
I remember back then the first time I saw a url at the movie theatre and wondered who would actually write that down and go to a "web site"
Just like in the 2000's I think that Widows Vista was the most revelutionary operating system. Many smartphones like like Apple and Android seems to have got many ideas from Windows Vista like apps asking for permission anytime they wanted to access the camera, microphone, or files
Umm, my phone is DEFINITELY listening to me, lol. Your description of the analog to digital transition of the 90s is something I was literally talking about like 2 days ago. I was mentioning how I'm a Millennial who grew up right before AND with the birth of the world wide web.
Love the video 👏
I begged my mom for weeks/months to buy Windows 95. She relented finally and I upgraded our Pentium 100 machine from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. I remember it being 13 floppy disks. It's a crappy joke of an OS today, but it was amazing at the time.
What an excellent analysis. Superb editing as well. Keep it up💜
My first 95 install was all 3.5 floppy. After that any system I built had a cdrom it was so much easier to do the install that way then disc one disc two disc three etc.
Even though Windows 98 was my first ever Operating System PC I still do have fond memories of Windows 95 as i had used it in my aunt's office. Me and My cousin used to play Roadrash and Played a bit in MS Paint as well. My cousin was a little bit naughty so he used to surf to those kind of websites (ahem ahem) and he was even caught by the supervisor as well. LOL
8:48
10/10 grocery list, especially the second to last one.
I remember the inital marketing really pumped up the 32-bit bit operating system thing which made everyone feel like they needed it... cause 32-bit is good.
When you clicked at the Start button and pressed after that on CTRL and - button together, a submenu with the choice of "Close" was appearing. And the whole Start button was disappeared when you clicked at the "Close" menu item. That was resulting in a PC which was practically not usable. 😊
The only solution was pressing the keys CTRL + ALT + DELETE keys. From here you could start the "explorer.exe" program which brought the Start menu back.
Most people was confused when they saw the PC without the Start menu. Sometimes I closed the Start menu and watched from the distance how people are reacting on that.
This was really fun. 😂
6:03 I get a ad
+1 for the historical analysis and divide of the 90s. I always bring this up in conversations about the decade.
I'm too young to remember windows 95 but I do remember when my dad's computers ran windows 2000, I grew up on XP
The release of Windows 95 in Japan was three months late. Still, I still want to visit Akihabara on November 23, 1995. So I want to get a Windows 95 PC and balloons. (You can find the video at that time on TH-cam) But in reality I was watching it on TV.
When Windows 95 was released, some Japanese PC makers started selling IBM PC compatibles in Japan in earnest. (Until then, Japan had its own PCs, including the NEC PC-9821) It made PCs cheaper and really became a "personal" computer. In addition, new brands such as SONY VAIO will be born. Windows 95 has changed the history of Japanese PCs.
you cannot be more accurate on all of this, i actually started working in 1997 with win95 then orbited to windows NT until win 2k and then linux from 2008, yes im a software developer for the past 24 years, what a ride in IT, so much seen happen, I remember the first time I saw win95 boot up, after been using dos 6.20 and win 3.11 as a perfect stable setup
I remember when my dad got the first computer with 95 and we kept updating the software until windows xp Microsoft paint and that space pinball machine was the best thing
I'm addicted to your videos, man