Wait – people waited in lines for Microsoft? Yes, I was among those trying to get my hands on one of the first copies of Microsoft’s first 32-bit operating system. It was Microsoft’s Apple time, when the company was much smaller and created more buzz around its products than it does today. It even had the Rolling Stones introduce the “Start” button with a version of “Start Me Up.”
Windows 95 arrived on August 24, 1995 after a series of beta versions and the software that was designed to provide Windows much easier network connectivity, especially Internet connectivity. The introduction was difficult for Microsoft as Windows 95 was plagued with software driver problems and users had to learn a specific way how to acquire and install drivers in order to get their hardware to function. Getting a CD-ROM drive to work at the time may have been a task for a few hours.
It was also the time when home PC users learned that system memory has a direct impact on your system performance. While Windows 3.11 PCs were typically equipped with 4 MB memory, Windows 95 was recommended to run with 8 MB – and that 4 MB upgrade was often sold in bundles with the operating system and a hefty price of about $150 for the memory alone. Windows 95 required you to have a 386DX class computer, while a 486 version was recommended. The entire operating system was provided either on 14 floppy disks or a CD-ROM, installed in 35 MB in its minimum configuration (standard configuration: 120 MB), which may not seem much, but some may remember that the average PC at the time came with 250 or 340 MB HDD space and higher-end Pentiums were introduced with 540 MB HDDs. Consumers were not dealing with multimedia files yet and the first version of the first person shooter Doom came zipped on three floppy disks.
Windows 95 was, conceivably, one of the most exciting times for Microsoft in its history and the time of its most significant growth. The volume of sales was smaller than today, but Microsoft was a different company and the PC surely had not yet turned into a commodity product.
Microsoft’s Eric Ligman remembers that, back in 1995, Microsoft had less than 18,000 employees, it had just entered into the MSNBC partnership with NBC and Bill Gates published his book “The Road Ahead”. Ligman goes on to tell us that Windows 7 is now the best selling OS in history, but then every Microsoft OS was said to be the best selling OS in history, even Vista and we know what happened to that. Windows 95 was a magical time in PC history, perhaps even more magical than the iPad, and if you have been around at that time, then you may also feel that Windows 7 just can’t match the overall experience.
The final release of Windows 95 shipped in November 1997 as OEM service release 2.5. Volume licensing ended in January 2001 and Microsoft ended support for Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 in January 2002, a few months after Windows XP had been introduced. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it will finally be halting sales of Windows XP in October of this year, making it the longest running operating system in Microsoft’s history.
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