Windows 95 is fifteen today. It's hard to imagine it now, but the launch was greeted with the sort of hype that only Apple generates today: the Empire State Building lit in Windows colours, midnight queues outside PC shops, wall-to-wall news coverage and that Rolling Stones riff.
To some, the arrival of Windows 95 heralded a brave new world of personal computing; to others, it was the beginning of a long period of stagnation for the PC platform.
There's no doubt that if you were running Windows 3.1 or 3.11, Windows 95 was like a visitor from the planet Groovy. No, really. It looked great, and provided you treated the system requirements - a 386 with 4MB of RAM and 120MB of disk space - with the contempt they deserved then it ran great too.
Heavily targeted towards home users as well as the more traditional corporate users, it was the first stand-alone Windows (MS-DOS was part of it rather than a separate OS). It had an exciting new interface that's still visible in Windows 7, and it even had Microsoft's first go at a Web browser - albeit one that was initially tucked away on the optional-extra Plus pack.
The beginning of the big boots
Critics, however, would argue that Windows 95 was when Microsoft started throwing its weight around.
They argue that by bundling MS-DOS inside Windows, Microsoft killed the market for MS-DOS rivals; the arrival of Internet Explorer would become the Netscape-crushing browser war; and the US Department of Justice found that it used the "Windows Tax" - that is, offering manufacturers discounted prices if they promised to limit the number of non-Windows PCs they sold - to stifle competition.
In 1998 consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote a devastating critique that accused Microsoft of "suffocating" the PC industry and argued that "the victims of Microsoft's monopolistic activities aren't just the companies that go belly-up; they are the consumers who pay high prices to use mediocre and unreliable products."
It's bleakly amusing to note that when the (then) Microsoft-owned Slate magazine responded to Nader, it argued that "in the browser wars, Microsoft faces a formidable array of opponents--Sun and Oracle, to name just two--and, after two years, it still lags behind Netscape even though IE generally gets better reviews than Navigator."
A force for good
Let's concentrate on the product itself, though, because when you do that Windows 95 was clearly a force for good too. It was a vast improvement over its predecessors. It revolutionised PC gaming. It made using computers - computers that we could actually afford to build or buy - much easier than before.
You may mock its primitive graphics, its press-Start-to-stop interface, its increasingly demented product names - Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2, anyone? - and its postie-crippling pile of installation floppies, but fifteen years ago Windows 95 was as cool as computing got.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liked this? Then check out 24 years of Windows package design
Sign up for TechRadar's free Weird Week in Tech newsletter
Get the oddest tech stories of the week, plus the most popular news and reviews delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up at http://www.techradar.com/register
Your comments (5) Click to add a new comment
mupwangle
August 25th 2010
5. >>Bradavon, are you sure it was in 95 from the get-go?
It wasn't in the original retail version, but was bundled with the OEM version. It was the same version in Plus! and the OEM. v2 was bundled in SR1.
Funnily enough, I've not had to do it for a while but I had to fix a Windows 95 PC yesterday with a failed HDD.
Alert a moderator
garymarshall
August 25th 2010
4. stu531 - maybe. All empires crumble eventually :)
Alert a moderator
garymarshall
August 24th 2010
3. Bradavon, are you sure it was in 95 from the get-go? I could have sworn it didn't appear as an integral part of Windows until OEMs got it, a while after the initial retail release.
According to Microsoft:
"The first version of Internet Explorer was not included with Windows 95 when the operating system was officially launched on August 24, 1995. Rather, we were introduced to Microsoft's first Web browser when the Windows 95 Plus! Pack was released."
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/community/columns/historyofie.mspx
You're right about windows 2000. That was a brilliant OS.
Alert a moderator
stu531
August 24th 2010
2. Arguably, from a UI point of view, the jump from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 was bigger than any other Windows release since. MS was going in the right direction, and changes since then have been refinements, although with possibly the biggest changes into Windows 7.
What's more interesting is the fact that (as pointed out), it's about at this time that Microsoft got a little arrogant/complacent about how dominant they were of market share.
Perhaps history is repeating itself with another well-known company that appears to be taking the raz out of its user base, that may find that it has to honour its faithful just that little bit more.
Alert a moderator
bradavon
August 24th 2010
1. Interesting article but you're wrong about the browser again. IE1 came with Windows 95 and IE2 came with the Plus pack.
Windows 95 was indeed a revolution. We wouldn't be where we are today in computing without it. It wasn't until Windows 2000 that you could say Windows was reliable and user friendly though. Windows 95-ME always suffered due to being bolted against MS-DOS.
Alert a moderator
Tell us what you think
You need to Log in or register to post comments