Microsoft officials have admitted one of their biggest challenges in continuing to grow the company's Windows business is the impression among some of its installed base that older Windows versions are good enough. The users of Windows 95, which turns ten years old on Wednesday, are a case in point. Elsewhere, here is a story about the launch of Windows 95 exactly 10 years ago.
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2005-07-06
I can't believe people still run Windows 95! Scary!
"Vista will require more powerful hardware than what most XP-based PC (users) out there already have, if one wants to get the full Vista 'experience,' Fisher said. "It might be best to wait a year and get a new PC with Vista pre-installed.
That sucks needs more powerful hardware becasue of more bloat i woudl assume. Hurry up SkyOS
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-12
Not so scary, actually.
Remember that there were at least four variants of Windows 95:
(1) the original,
(2) OSR2 with FAT32 support,
(3) OSR2.1 with FAT32/USB support, and
(4) OSR2.5 with FAT32/USB support and IE 4.0),
and that the last three were far more common than the original when preloaded on a PC.
Win95 supports at least DirectX 8.0a, also, meaning a lot of games will run under that OS, it'll still run the most recent versions of FireFox and OpenOffice, and it's also a little more resistant to the common Windows worms than Win2k or XP.
For older hardware, it really isn't a bad choice if a Windows variant must be used, at least IMO.
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All too often people equate aesthetically pleasing graphics with bloat.... or unnecessary eye candy." As more OSes offset their visual "eye candy" to the graphics card, this strategy actually alleviates strain in the processor. The hit on the graphics processor is so insignificant that UI developers can even afford to go even further without performance degradation.
The problem is not the "UI candy bloat" as so many people assume, its the bad use of this "eye candy".... or in other words... yet even further examples of bad UI design.
Adding animations and glowing buttons, shadows etc is great as long as it servers a purpose other than "it looks good." Unfortunately, few realize this fact judging but the number of people who insist on themeing their operating system... which in most instances is a step backward from the default UI.
Member since:2005-06-29
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"The problem is not the "UI candy bloat" as so many people assume, its the bad use of this "eye candy".... or in other words... yet even further examples of bad UI design. "
I prefer to see it as an opportunity to experiment in alternative UIs. There's still a lot of experimentation left even after Xerox and Apple.
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Adding animations and glowing buttons, shadows etc is great as long as it servers a purpose other than "it looks good."
I disagree. Perception goes a long way toward improving the computing experience. Imagine a UI that was grayscale with simple boxes and courier text for buttons contrasted to the gel-like glowing nature of controls in OS X and Vista. Certainly, the visual improvements are not functional, they are aesthetic.
At the risk of getting hate mail, I think a lot of folks enjoy KDE versus Gnome because it offers a more visually stunning interface. Just my opinion.
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At the risk of getting hate mail, I think a lot of folks enjoy KDE versus Gnome because it offers a more visually stunning interface. Just my opinion.
You're right about stunning...KDE's interface is down right shocking. While some of the icons for KDE are quite nice I like the clean uncluttered look of Gnome over KDE.
That said, I used Gnome on my main work machine for the last 6 months (and previous versions a few years ago) and it annoyed the hell out of me. So much so I moved back to KDE and it's comparitively less elegent looking interface elements.
For example, the file browser in Gnome has been simplfied so much it no longer has a location field; I have to click to get anywhere. KDE has a location bar with file name completion; much nicer.
I have high hopes for Gnome slowly finding the right mix of features, though it's way too minimialist at this point for me. Maybe in 6 months?
Member since:2005-07-12
Well, I agree with you upto a certain extent, but then the all new Windows XP GUI is an example of something that was way slower than the old interface, and only improved the looks of the operating system. Adding animations and transparency does affect the performance to some extent, and some people may not even be using accelerated video modes (or they may just dislike eye candy 
.
Adding animations and glowing buttons, shadows etc is great as long as it is optional.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-06-29
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Windows 95 may still work, but if it needs to support newer hardware, or handle files from newer machines running newer software then it really won't be much good at all. Anyone still running Windows 95 who can afford it might want to consider buying a new computer with a newer OS preinstalled.
On the other hand, Win95 probably predates any DRM and trusted computing junk, so one of these days (should my concerns about "trusted computing" come true) those old machines may be more usefull than what would be current at the time.
Sure upgrading isn't necessary, but buying a computer at least once every ten years isn't that hard either and then you can benifit from the hardware and software improvements that have taken place since you bought your last computer. I think the general practise with most people is to buy a new computer either when a significant new version of Windows is released, or when their hardware is starting to feel too slow. Personally I preffer Linux and like to get good performance even with heavy apps so I think upgrading once every five years is good, as far as Mac users go I don't know what they use to decide when to upgrade since I've never so much as seen one of those computers in person yet.
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Just like the choice that linux users have, for us who have old computers and like tweaking them, windows 9x
is great and very fast. I do use win xp on two of my
computers,But, right now i am posting this from a win98
machine. but my wife has a win 95 old laptop too low
on specs to run win xp, but to run win 95/98, it's
great. (And no the only linux i like is live cd only.well...SUSE linux is okay) oh yeah both firefox and opera run very well on 95/98.
Member since:2005-06-29
There is more than eye candy to each release of Windows, in fact one of the more important changes is one that isn't going to be apparent to regular users, and that is the API's.
Programs written for older versions of Windows do still work in the newer versions; however, there are additions to the API's, and that's probably the main reason why some applications require a certain version of Windows or newer. The reason these changes aren't obvious right away is because people are reluctant to migrate to newer versions of Windows that have those new API additions, and as a result companies cannot leverage the new API additions until enought of their market migrates to a new enough version of Windows.
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At this non-profit, Windows 95 is the most popular operating system. There are about 25 donated machines running it.
Remember the Rolling Stones song Microsoft used with the release? "You make a grown man cry!"
We have ordered hardware for our Linux terminal server. Can't wait.
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The linux kernel has in the last year or two has matured to a point where it should no longer have major compatability issues with future releases. The kernel at this point is still adding features but is keeping and perfecting the existing features as to maintain compatability with future releases.
The addage that linux loses compatability with every release has been gone for some time.
That all been said, Windows 95 was indeed a milestone in it's time and there is definitly something to be said about a 10 year old os running modern software.
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"That all been said, Windows 95 was indeed a milestone in it's time and there is definitly something to be said about a 10 year old os running modern software."
That depends on what your definition of the word "modern" is. There's something to be said alright, about Win95, and what I say about it requires me to put one middle finger down my throat. 
Member since:2005-06-29
That's easy, if the software is compiled statically there is little chance of a problem. However, generally free software takes advantage of shared libraries much more than commercial windows software: Because there are more free libraries to link against and better distribution/resolution methods for those dependencies.
But, when necessary, free projects are more likely to backport for a niche; for example firefox supposedly runs on Win95...
I have put several pieces of new software on a 5 year out of date linux machine.
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Ummm... I don't know what your qualifications are, but as a software engineer who has spent the last eleven years writing software for Unix, and Windows (95, NT, and even *gasp* 3.x) I would say that it is uncommon for Windows software to be statically linked. Remember that a DLL is a shared library, and Windows software makes heavy use of DLLs.
As to your comment about free software taking advantage of shared libraries more than commercial software, I would argue that a more correct statement is that free software takes advantage of _free_ shared libraries more than commercial software does. It is probably also the case that commercial software takes advantage of _comercial_ shared libraries more than free software does. This has nothing do do with technology, it is purely a business issue.
I would argue that the reason that modern applications can run on a 10 year old windows operating system is that the 10 year old system in question implements the Win32 API. Windows applicaions, no matter how they are implemented, at some point execute against the Win32 API (unless they are native applications, but those are not usually important to the average user).
If I were willing to be impressed by Firefox running on Windows 95, I would be impressed by the fact that Firefox can accomplish everything it does by using an API that is 10 years old.
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We have four machines running win95, and two others running win 98.
Why well because new machines cost money, the old ones work with only weekly reboots, no new software gets stored on them, they are basically used as a Dos Shell to access our Netware server.
As for running Open office or firefox, both require a DLL that is found in win98 or above. if you copy this system dll to win95 however it does work. I did it with firefox 0.8? i believe maybe 0.9
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I use windows 95 on my game server.. Runs UT, doom, ufo 2000 etc games servers perfectly. Not everyone needs the latest and greatest. I never have win95 crash and its lightning fast. As someone mentioned already, theres directx 8 for it and loads of new apps still work on it. If you have a newish video card with opengl support you can run a load of newer games in 95 still I have a voodoo 3 in my tower.
For older gaming, you cant beat win95.
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I use my new AMD64 machine to play games, i can play new games in my 20" LCD-monitor and they look good and run very fast . Plus most old games still work on XP, even old Dos games with emulator. So i have far more faster machine that plays all new games and most old games, it's much more stable than any old system and i can always boost it with new parts that WORKS in my system. So throw away your crabby systems and live today, not past.
For old and new gaming, you can't beat fast modern PC with WinXP .
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I remember that day well. I got nicely caught up by the Windows 95 hype, and yes, I was one of those people who went out and bought it on day one. On day two, I had to go out and buy a bigger hard drive so I could actually install it :-)
But for the time, it was a great desktop OS. Linux wasn't on the radar in those days, and Win95 was a quantum leap over 3.1 for so many reasons. I followed the Windows upgrade path as far as Windows 2000, then moved to Linux and never looked back.
Looking at it from today's perspective, Windows XP is the first consumer Windows that isn't actually "rubbish", and yet it's the one version I never ran. But whatever, I still have fond memories of those days of hope and excitement, as the web age dawned, and Windows 95 appeared (though Microsoft almost missed the web bit in those days!)
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I'm running it right now on my work laptop. Well, it's a big improvement, and I can see that it "works" for many people in the real world. But having got used to the power and freedom of Linux (at home), I still find Windows very limiting. It's also still too maintenance-heavy. But at least, by Windows standards, XP "works" and is stable.
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"The reason you think it isnt rubish is probably that you never ran it."
No kidding...I'm about to send a family member a 'rescue CD' with SP2, Firefox, AdAware, and Spybot S&D for their Win XP box. At least they'll have a fighting chance before firing up their modem...I hope.
It still baffles me why Microsoft hasn't been sued into oblivion by now for their constant defects and deceptive advertising. It really is amazing. Any other industry, and a company like Microsoft would be ground to dust.
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The thing is, maybe you've got your system tweaked and adjusted, and have 90% of the worst bugs ironed out, and then suddenly here comes Microsoft with a new version of Windows. Which requires you to rubbish all your hard work and start again.
For most people this isn't a big deal. But let's say you've got a workflow built around a particular OS, and upgrading it would break the workflow. Upgrading will require hundreds of man-hours of tweaking and bug hunting and so-on. But you don't have that much time. You need it to work NOW, and by cracky, it DOES work now, with the older system
Tell me, why bother upgrading? If Windows 95 works (and clearly it does) what's the point of upgrading?
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:) i maintain a little office, 4x win98 SE + Debian server (samba/cvs). I know I will never change the enviroment: it just works (TM) People used to it. I have never got a single virus (there are good av free systems out there, cf. clamav) for six years. The only reason to change would be hardware error, if I couldnt find a hardware with win98 support. I hope it never happens
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Why is everyone so against eye candy? Part of the computing "experience" comes from visual effects and the asthetic appeal. If people didn't think that was true, car companies wouldn't be able to sell slick new high tech looking automobiles. Web developers wouldn't bother spending hours in Photoshop and Flash to make sites more visually pleasing. All products in general take on a more advanced look as they progress. I don't know about you, but if all I had to look at on my computer for the past 10 years was the basic windows 95 theme, I probably would have stopped using computers by now. Just because you run a PC that's 10 years old doesn't mean new operating systems should look like they're 10 years old just so they can perform well. Get with the times. Get a new PC, and enjoy the new "bloated" eye candy interface of Windows Vista when it is released.
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I guess I am not into the computing "experience" (Lord, I even hate the term). I use a computer, as I use a car; both are tools. One helps me get my work done and the other gets me to work.
That being said, I have Win 95 thru Win XP Home and use them all. Win 95 for playing certain old favorite games, Win 98 for a fairly current gaming system, Win ME for certain, selected music programs which work perfectly on that particular OS. For business I use Windows 2000 Professional and I just got Win XP Home on a new laptop (for school).
I also use several different Linux distros; all are fun and all are different. Some are for business purposes and others are for other uses.
However, they are simple tools; I could care less about the "eye candy" as I don't look at it any longer than necessary to execute those programs which I am using.
Later,
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Windows is about choice? Where the heck did that come from? The only choice you get with Windows is the one Bill Gates wants you to have. Why is it every version of Windows sucks up more and more resources? How about trying to slim things down a bit? Windows takes up so much space it isnt even funny. Try this out: Install WinXP Pro, all patches, drivers and then Office with all options and the Visual Studio with all options. You are looking at like 5-10 Gigs. In 5 Gigs I can install Linux with more software than you can throw a stick at. If it can be written so cleanly for Linux for free, what the hell is Microsoft's excuse? They sure have the money to make sure it was done right.
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"im tired of people saying all this crap about windows and virus. people who get virus in windows are people who dont know how to use windows and do stupid shit that gets them viruses. me i run windows 98se and xp and i never get viuses."
You very missinformed Windows user indeed, most people who use Windows buy a new computer and dont know about virus's. The point is they shouldn't have to deal with this crap, if they had Linux it's not a problem. When I last used Windows over 3 years ago I never got a virus, buts thats not the point since i'm a experienced user.
Funny how Windows users assume Windows is that easy people shouldn't get virus's, worms ect. You simply dont have a clue to do!
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2005-07-06
Not really, a not to updated win95 box are rather safe when it comes to virus and worms. Baring you have not updated to the latest possible version of IE and media player, as those too drag with them lots of ActivX updates and such. The truth is whitout those updates win95 are so outdated and lacking recent API, most of the dangerous code wont even run or crash. As the malware writers thankfully like everyone else use the latest in development tools and APIs, and they don't bother to be backwards compatible. And the oldschool maleware are already known and tend die out in the wild. You don't have to keep your virus scanner up to date to detect 5 years old virus, and the targets tends to get fewer making spreading harder.
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just wait until something goes astray and you lose all your long filenames, which will be converted to something like mydoc~1
after exactly that happened to me, i switched to ntfs
after ntfs crashed (fist few sectors lost because windows xp liked to write to those sectors during system turnoff) i had to buy expensive repair software but i recovered all my files
now i store most of my important files on ext3 and my maildir on reiserfs - no problems so far
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> I for one shall NEVER NEVER NEVER upgrade from my P2 MMX!!! It runs Loonix just fine! I dont need more power for bloated OS's with such useless features as search folders, or managed runtimes, or more multi user features, or virtualisation!
That more or less describes me:
11 years ago...
in a BBS in a country far, far away...
A friend -- Hey, Dude (my real name omitted), what do you use?
Me -- Windows 3.11, officialy bought.
My friend -- Hmmm, did you really buy it or...?
Me -- I really bought it, at discount price. I really don't like piracy, that's why I had to spend the money.
My friend -- And what now that Windows 95 is over the corner? Are you going to buy it, too?
Me -- Nope. I'll only install Windows 95 if they send it to me as a "bug fix release".
And so I did, never bought and never pirated Windows 95. Windows 3.11 was good enough for my student times (I was not in a tech school).
Windows 98 came and I also procrastined buying it. I'm really good at this -- procrastination... :-P
You know, many good games then resorted to DOS for faster playability -- Windows was not in the map, anyway.
Then it came a time when Windows 98 appeared and things got really bad... many new cool things required 32 bits.
I was being forced to upgrade, but had no money, and didn't want to submit to temptation (i.e., pirate Windows in zealot lingo).
But then, I learned about Linux (kernel 2.0, IIRC). And since then, no more Windows.
Now, some 2 years ago I bought a new computer, which came with XP home professional (yeah, right). Maybe I find some use for it one of these days... nah, let's kill that beast!
So there, never say never...
d0_0b (formerly Lee Nooks)
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"A decade later: Windows 95 keeps going"
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Not without numerous reboots Haha.
FWIW, I'm glad I gave up on it (and pretty much ignored 98 (great USB support tho) and totally ignored Windows ME. By the time ME rolled around I was deep into Windows 2000 territory for all my work (and before that, NT 4.0 to a sizable extent, but curse its USB & plug&play shortcomings). 95/98/ME were horrid unstable junk. Great for ma & pa & young Billy doing just the basics tho. There are lots in that boat so Windows 95 is 'fine' for them.
But try to have too much happening and it systematically reveals its 'personality' to you; blue screens, instability after long hours (especially if programs move a lot of memory), the constant need to reboot, etc. Good riddance! (and thank heavens for the better ACPI hardware and the far more stable OSs that followed).
Windows 2000 was (and still is) IMO, an underrated OS and the best Microsoft has released (no product activation limiting what you do, no annoying hand-holding, no Messenger auto-starting by default, no constant connections probing the net, etc.
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"FWIW, I'm glad I gave up on it (and pretty much ignored 98 (great USB support tho) and totally ignored Windows ME. By the time ME rolled around I was deep into Windows 2000 territory for all my work (and before that, NT 4.0 to a sizable extent, but curse its USB & plug&play shortcomings)."
What! No Windows for Workgroups?
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2005-07-11
i'm no OS god or anything... but wasn't it damn near impossible to really use multi-tasking with windows before 2k?
context switches seemed to take forever, and then if you had more than three or four windows open you could wonder into BSOD territory.
i was a big DOS geek though, so i was upset by being forced to be in the GUI by win95. too bad i didn't discover linux till years later or i'd probably be one of the CLI only linux zealots by now.
but whatever... if it still works for folks then use it. no need for unecessary consumerism if what you've got works right?
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"i was a big DOS geek though, so i was upset by being forced to be in the GUI by win95."
Yea I remember you guys, you used to say something like
GUI ??? MOUSE ??? Those are baby toys, nobody is going to use those things, Apple is doomed to fail.
Apple is dying comment #1
:P
http://homepage.mac.com/hogfish/PhotoAlbum2.html
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I still have CyrixGX 166MHz CPU based PowerSpecs desktop PC which is specifically designed to run Windows95 and it runs well. Not even Windows98 would run on it without serious problems ( sound and video ). There are couple more PowerSpecs computers still humming under office desks networked around the Windows 2000 Small Business Server.For what we need it just fine OS.
Couple days ago I've rescued four sets of MS-DOS 6,22 floppy-disks from dumpster filled with all kinds of junk found in one day "all-church-clean-up" action. And our phone system still relies on MS-DOS application running on top of 486DX2 CPU.
Windows95 is still cute OS. I remember trying to install it ( from 13 setup floppies) on my IBM 386 microchanel laptop. Gosh, back then I learned what does it mean "bloatware". With my first Pentium I 120MHz CPU Windows 95 turn to be usable GUI/OS. Stripped down to approx. 85 megabytes core operating system installation Windows95 can be really good file server, MP3 streaming server and good intranet WEB server ; not really secure but still...
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OMG 5 - 10 gigs!?? What ever shall I do!?! I can buy 40 gigabyte HDs at the local computer store for $50 and $64 gets me 80 gigs. What ever will I do about a whopping 5-10 gig install of software.
I could see 5-10 gigs being a big deal ten years ago but in the age of 200+ gigabyte hard disks I do not see the problem.
Member since:2005-06-29
I hate to destroy your fantasy world, but Linux competes quite nicely with Windows XP, nevermind 95. Linux may be missing a few features, but at the same time Windows has had to catch up to Linux before as well. A few minor features of such small significance, which by the way KDE either has or has alternatives to, are nothing to base how well the OS or desktop compares as a whole.
By the way, KDE has menu editing through a menu editor application, quite frankly it's better in some cases. Also you complain that it doesn't have these exact features, yet if it did you'd simply be crying that Linux is copying off Windows (another common troll post).
Easy Menu Editing -> Menu editor application
Changing resolution on the fly -> There's a KDE tray applet for that, it's easy to get to and works very nicely.
Finally you are nothing but a troll recycling a very old troll post, don't expect to be greeted very warmly around here.
Member since:2005-07-06
The KDE menu editor is nice, but Win* does better. In UNIX, everything is a file, or should be. In KDE for UNIX, all menu entries are stored in a file. In Windows, each menu entry is a file (a shortcut). Windows sometimes follows the UNIX philosophy better than KDE.
And that is disappointing.
Apart from that, I like the KDE user interface much more than the Windows UI.
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Sorry, but you apparently don't understand what the 'Everything is a file" philosophy is about. It's not about how applications store their data, it's how system objects are accessed. System objects are supposed to follow the file semantic (open, seek, read, write, close) which then allows to present them in a filesystem tree and to browse and manipulate them with the standard Unix utilities. See /dev, /sys or /proc for example.
Moreover, menu entries are individual files following the Desktop Entry Spec :
http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/desktop-entry-spec
and the layout of the menu is defined in a separate XML File :
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fmenu_2dspec
This separation between menu entries and the menu itself is actually a very good idea and a lot better than the Windows' way.
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In Windows, each menu entry is a file (a shortcut). Windows sometimes follows the UNIX philosophy better than KDE.
While it doesn't happen much in Windows, it happens just as rarely in KDE or Gnome.
* The KIO slaves with nifty urls don't map back to anything outside of KDE; if you type in the URL sftp://user@192.168.1.101 in Konqueror, df shows nothing and you can't go to any location on the local machine to pick up the mount point...unless it's a KDE app.
* If I plug in a flash drive, df shows it is mounted on /media/usbdrive ... and KDE shows it as /mnt/sda1 in the desktop icon.
I don't understand why there is such a disconnect between KDE and the OS when the OS+shell (in this case Linux and Bash) does such a good job of handling files and resources properly.
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{* The KIO slaves with nifty urls don't map back to anything outside of KDE; if you type in the URL sftp://user@192.168.1.101 in Konqueror, df shows nothing and you can't go to any location on the local machine to pick up the mount point...unless it's a KDE app. }
That sounds like an fstab problem... you're mounting it in KDE and thus the df won't display it as a mount.
{* If I plug in a flash drive, df shows it is mounted on /media/usbdrive ... and KDE shows it as /mnt/sda1 in the desktop icon. }
sounds like an fstab problem again, I've not experienced this issue.
{I don't understand why there is such a disconnect between KDE and the OS when the OS+shell (in this case Linux and Bash) does such a good job of handling files and resources properly.}
one of the many things that needs to be worked on, but part of the reason is the differing file structures even among linux distros makes the X desktops, less dependant on the under structure, and forces them to create their own structure... which is why if you don't have you're memory card specifically mapped in fstab it will show up as two locations. Really distros should do this automagically.. Ubuntu by default has no fstab entries for other drives in your computer or possible memory card mounts.
----> to the guy that was complaining about not being able to drag menu entries around, I find this "feature" annoying as it's too easy for those with mouse clicking problems to drag things into folders and then complain that they can't find them.
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That sounds like an fstab problem... you're mounting it in KDE and thus the df won't display it as a mount.
This isn't an fstab config issue. If you pick any KDE IO slave and use it to 'mount' a resource, fstab would have to either;
* Be pre-configured for each and every possible condition and path. (That ain't going to happen.)
* Be capable of handling dynamic mount points. (For non-KIO mounts such as local drives, this happens...though not properly.)
The problem is that there is a disconect between KDE's view of the world and the rest of the system.
The KDE SSH mount created in Konqueror mentioned before -- sftp://user@192.168.1.101 -- isn't being seen as a mounted volume because KDE does not push it out and inform the rest of the system (including fstab) about it. Gnome is as bad in parts, unfortunately.
With Windows, the drive shows up as a letter or a network path...though Windows does not support many protocols or the command prompt very well either.
sounds like an fstab problem again, I've not experienced this issue.
Automounting modifies /media/ fine and updates fstab correctly. KDE mounts it fine. KDE, though, calls the mount by the device name not the mount point. That's a defect not a feature.
Gnome, btw, does handle this elegently and automatically. Very slick.
one of the many things that needs to be worked on, but part of the reason is the differing file structures even among linux distros makes the X desktops, less dependant on the under structure, and forces them to create their own structure... which is why if you don't have you're memory card specifically mapped in fstab it will show up as two locations. Really distros should do this automagically.. Ubuntu by default has no fstab entries for other drives in your computer or possible memory card mounts.
In the case of the flash drive, it is automatic and dynamic; an unknown device can be easily mounted without updating fstab manually.
The defect is in the way KDE names the mount.
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I've still got a computer that is running Win95 (the very first edition) and it runs like a dream. It's only an AMD 486-133 w/64mb ram, soundblaster pro, and nVidia TNT card, but it runs/loads programs from it's era almost as fast as present day hardware will run new programs on XP. For a lot of what I do, there isn't that much difference in older and newer software...
OTOH, I remember when I first got 95, the only computer I had was a Packard Bell 486-66 with no onboard cache, onboard video (that never had proper win9X drivers) and a 420mb hard drive. That made for a miserable experience, with constant lockups and crappy performance in all areas. It went back to win3.11 and I still have it as a DOS games machine for the kids to play with. (Alt,F,X was faster than Start, Shutdown, etc too! heh heh)
Even today I don't have XP or 2000 on any computers at home, though I own copies of both. 95/98 and Linux fill my needs, and if I want to play around with older/obscure hardware it's easier to get drivers for win9X than mess with 2000 or activate XP...
Actually though, It seemed to me that there was more of a buzz to get a computer with Windows 3.1 than win95. Maybe because that was the first real "point and click" for the masses which dropped the learning curve to a child's level. Of course win3.1 didn't burst onto the scene, but the desire level seemed higher for a longer period...
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Microsoft's certainly experiencing an issue with the "good enough" mentality....... a hypothetical example:
From Microsoft's perspective, when will Mstf's next OS, "Windows Vista" be judged to be a solid success ?? - for them, it's probably when it's on around 25-30 % of existing Windows users desktops - given that Vista will come out late 2006 early 2007, when will it be on around 25-30 % of existing Windows users desktops ?? - they might only reach that penetration in 2009-2010 - if this is the case, then Msft will be feeling quite unsettled over the coming years. The next 4 years before Vista will have significantly penetrated the desktop will provide ample time for desktop Linux, MAC OS-X etc etc to gain an increasing foothold in the market. The days of the outright Msft hegenomy on the desktop are clearly coming to an end.
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I can read that through the comments :
"Vista will require more powerful hardware than what most XP-based PC (users) out there already have, if one wants to get the full Vista 'experience,' Fisher said. "It might be best to wait a year and get a new PC with Vista pre-installed.
That sucks needs more powerful hardware becasue of more bloat i woudl assume. Hurry up SkyOS
And why nobody is complaining because half doom 8 runs damn slow of their brand new PC ?
Can't you just stop spitting on Ms just because it's Ms ?
The day (if this day comes) a new OS leads the market, it will become the new public enemy and the new target of virus creators...
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The day (if this day comes) a new OS leads the market, it will become the new public enemy and the new target of virus creators...
Is there a hardened windows XP branch? Is there trusted-XP? Ofcourse will there be viri and worms for the new OS that leads the marked.But unlike for windows ther're hardened projects.At the moment it's more suitable for tech savvy,sys-admins and other die-hards.To name a few: PAX ,Grsecurity,PIE/SPP,SELinux,RSBAC,etc
I installed a while ago gentoo-hardened on my parents P1V 1.8GHz box.It is hardened with PAX,Grsecurity,PIE/SPP,and a hardened toolchain,and all options are on,yet they still have xorg working for online banking etc.
This has some usabillity restrictions,as allways high sec comes at a certain prize.But my parents only browse the net and do online banking so i could engage max protection for them.You see the protection is there just in case,and the distros could implement them any minute if they feel the need to do so.It's all up to the desires and public expectation.
What has MS come up with?
SP2 that introduces an old DOS attack vector (Land attack) from '97.
I got tired with MS and switched long ago.Have a playstation and a good hifi set,so no need for any MS product.
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2005-07-06
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I used to work in Seagate, they still use Win 3.11 to test the hard disk because they use specialise machines for testing and the computer hardware in those machines can only support Win 3.11 (4-8MB RAM).
My current company is still using Win 95 for Visual basic data entry programs link to the database local on Unix servers.
For most companies, if it isn't broken, they don't change it.
The cost of changing OS and applications are quite high.
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I help run a non-profit community centre cybercaf/teaching lab running MSWin9x. Yep, that's right, this Linux guy gets his nose rubbed in the worst of Microsoft's inadequacies every day.
Ghost floppy seeks when shutting down, when closing applications, malware with nice, friendly come-hither smiles to tempt the unwary (Claria's Gator.com, GAIN Publishing and PrecisionTime - any further need for comment?), buggly random crashes, etc.
I'd forgive Microsoft an awful lot if they would release their MSWin9x source tree under the CPL or MPL so we could do something to string those problems up by their short-and-curlies, but Microsoft is a marketing company, not a customer-oriented company.
And this weeping and wailing over having to compete with their installed base, they could be using their installed base to get rid of the bugs - but Microsoft being Microsoft, I doubt they'll ever see it that way.
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"I'd forgive Microsoft an awful lot if they would release their MSWin9x source tree under the CPL or MPL so we could do something to string those problems up by their short-and-curlies, but Microsoft is a marketing company, not a customer-oriented company."
Now be fair. Do you know any company that releases the source-code to it's software (OS or not)? IBM hasn't even released the source-code to OS/2. Does that mean that it's not a customer-oriented company? That it, God forbid, is a marketing company?
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Now be fair. Do you know any company that releases the source-code to it's software (OS or not)?
Sun; Solaris.
IBM hasn't even released the source-code to OS/2.
1. Source in general:
IBM's contributions to http://www.eclipse.org.
2. OS/2 specifically:
As a former OS/2 advocate and current admirer of many things OS/2 did very very well...I say good. I have no need to see OS/2's source code and IBM would not be doing us much of a favor by releasing it. The excelent WPS aside, OS/2 was flakey and had deadlocks in the UI.
Since the main gem -- the WPS -- was integrated with HPFS and the object system OS/2 used, porting it would be very painful and have very low benifits. Instead, brining WPS-style objects to other desktops would make more sense.
Does that mean that it's not a customer-oriented company? That it, God forbid, is a marketing company?
Microsoft makes some real annoying choices that only make sense if they are marketing edicts. The customer only gets enough to make marketing happy...no more.
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Remember teh pre release bullshit Microsoft was putting out about Windows 95? Well, it actually got released and it was before anyone knew it but it wasn't from Microsoft and it wasn't Windows 95. It was OS2.
Such a pity medioc software won the day. 10 years later and here we are picking up the pieces and moving on.
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2005-07-09
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Actually bought my first PC in 95 but ended up going for 3.11 as it was about half the price and I didn't see the point of getting 95. Was happy using 3.11 for a long while but in the end MS making DX a 95 thing only forced me to upgrade for the games. I seem to remember the people that made DX actually designed it for 3.11 but MS decided to stick it only on 95 for obvious reasons.
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Have an application(s) that does not port to newer OSes. Particularly a problem for some business apps not to mention games. Yes this is still a real problem!
Newer Operating System will not run on older machines, not enough ram or CPU horsepower. Better to keep them running win95 as a world processor than buy a whole new machine.
Cost!!!! Ever think what it costs to buy 25 licenses of Windows XP. Even the upgrade price is high. In today's world where you can buy the basic computer (harddrive and ram included) for under $200 how can you justify that much for the Operating System?
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I have been coding for DOS back even then, of course there was no real dynamic linking there, too!
But there is a big difference between windows and linux there, which is more philosophy. Windows application use a good deal of shared libraries - well, those that you find on any platform implementing the win32 api! And those are binary compatible (except however, for the additions in newer versions of windows). On top of that however, the dll hell might start, if the developer places the additional dlls he uses in the system dir. As a result I see a lot of dlls placed in the apps folder (could nearly be linked in statically anyway then, except it is a plugin), or well, exe files that are several mb big!
Probably I should better say, real sharing of shared libraries seems like it is done more often in Linux then on Windows, whereas those libraries are by far not abi stable at all, involving all the trouble (I think this is a good reason why package management is necessary for linux, while Windows can work "just" with installers).
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2005-07-27
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I wouldn't like to see me run anything on Window 95. :-)
The point of my post was not that _all_ modern applications run on Windows95, it was instead that static linking is not the reason that modern applications can run on Windows95.
I believe that I ended my last post with a comment about being impressed with Firefox for doing all it can do with what amounts to a 10 year old API. I did say that all applications can do this. Obviously Microsoft, for reasons that could be business oriented or technical in nature, has created applications that require newer versions of the Win32 API.
Just because Microsoft's newer software requires a newer version of a Microsoft OS does not diminish from the fact that an API that was designed 10 years ago (which is like 100 computer years ;-) ) can still power modern applications.
As a side note: If I were Microsoft, and I made alot of money selling operating systems, I would absolutly make my newer software require my newer operating system. That would certainly provide my customers an incentive to keep paying me for newer versions...
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2005-07-06
Microsoft's attempt to jump-start PC sales again. Oh what, your computer can't have the full Vista experience? You should buy a new one, here's Dell's number ....
I don't see any compelling reason to have purchased a brand new computer since shortly before/after WindowsXP came out, and the sales figures that get released from various sources have shown that I'm not alone. These poor computer manufacturers need their profit, and what better way to do so than a new OS from Microsoft with steep hardware requirements.
All sarcasm aside, if the computer mfg's could actually innovate maybe they wouldn't have such poor sales. You know how MS always says "listening to our customers", "providing what our customers want", etc. What batch of customers do you think they're pandering to with these hardware requirements.
I realize that a good portion of Vista's req's stem from the new UI stuff, but it really makes me wonder. Apple can do the same type of stuff in OSX using much more meager video chips (Radeon 9000 for example), and manage to keep the vast majority of it running nice and smooth visually.
I know its off-topic, sorry.
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Windows 2000 was the first OS from Microsoft that I actually liked. It has better stability and multitasking than Windows 95/98/me.
XP seemed like they simply added a bunch of resource-hogging extras on top of 2000 with an unprofessional-looking GUI. The only thing good about XP is the security features added by SP2 and some of the new API functions for easier programming.
I know a people that don't like XP so they still install their Windows 2000 CD on new computers that come with XP.
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This is a good point. For everyone I know their current version of Windows is good enough, whether 95, 98, 2000, or XP. Its only when they can't run the software they want to run that they upgrade. Or when the machien dies. If they can do all they want on the machine they have they will use it.
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10 years ??? Seems I'm getting old now :-)
I had my first encounter with Win95 while assembling a new computer for a friend of mine (468DX4 100, 16 MByte Ram, 1GByte Harddisk and a 17" CRT Monitor). Back then, this was a rather sophisticated (and quite expensive) setup, and Win95 worked (compared with Win3.11/3.1) like a rocket on this machine.
I didn't switched to Win95 before fall 1996, because I spent the whole year 1994 to make WfW 3.11 stable enough for my purposes (networking) and my hardware base (468DX40,4MByte Ram,270 MByte WD Harddisk,Vesa local bus. Yes, I owned one of the three computers actually delivered with this Bus :-) ).
The first thing I actually looked up on the WWW (via AltaVista, if my memory doesn't fails me) and not by trolling Usenet was how to "dual boot" win95 with Dos 6.2, if you were unlucky enough to wipe out Dos during the installation of Win95
IIRC I had to buy an extra 4 MByte RAM Bar to actually get the damn thing to work (somehow). Win 98 was the last windows release I actually tried out myself (without being forced to do so for university/work), I switched to Linux in 1999 and never looked back.
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I find Windows XP SP3 Unofficial DOWNLOAD page here http://windows.czweb.org/index.php?section=show_text_article&dir=wi...
