I remember when Windows 95 came to town.
Suddenly, a desktop metaphor that always seemed clunky as hell (Win3x) became — something usable. A dozen different utilities became obsolete. It was a system, an interface, I could work with, not work around.
Sure, Win9x had problems. It was built on top of DOS, for one thing. But Win9x drove the final nail into the Windows-vs-MacOS debate. The MacOS, in its different flavors, may very well be a superior OS, but as far as interface issue go, it’s not superior enough. Win9x does the job just well enough.
Last week, MS pulled the plug on Win98 support; 95 went away a long time ago. WinME loses its support at the end of the year.
Most companies, I suspect, have already made the cutover to Win2K or WinXP (or Linux, etc.). We’d certainly been pretty much forced to here, based on OS/NOS interactions. But a lot of home systems still run on Win9x, and, for some people and applications, the underlying OS is a lot less critical than it once was.
It’s worth noting that about 24% of my visitors here use Win98 (about the same as use Win2K). That will, of course, over time, continue to dwindle.
Time marches on.
As a once-upon-a-time diehard Amiga fanatic it took Windows 95’s introduction to finally make the PC something I was willing to use. I still wish Commodore hadn’t been run by total idiots who didn’t understand what they had in the Amiga. Oh well.
I’ve still got my Amiga 500 in my closet, Les. It was (still is, if we had room for it, it’d be out on a desk/table somewhere) a great machine!
I was one of the beta testers for Word for Windows on Windows 2.0. It had a 15 minute MTTCP. (Mean time to C Prompt)
I remember that when I first got Win95, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. I’d been using a Dashboard, so already had the function (if not the reality) of multitasking and Win95 was really different from what I’d grown accustomed to.
Eventually I got over my fear of change and warmed to it, of course. I realized just how much when I sat down a couple of years later at the Win 3.1 doorstop my mom was using – it felt like I’d stuck my brain into a vat of acid.
Exactly. I’d been using Norton Desktop, which provided a number of the same sort of dragging-icons-around capabilities that Win3x just couldn’t handle.
I’d say that it’s a sign of its success (both commercial and functional) that, even with the glossy stuff added to WinXP’s interface, it’s still basically the same.
Heh, I have my trusty old A3000 sitting on my cubicle desk to my right here. At home I still have my old A1200 and A1000 in storage.
I’m still trying to find a (relatively) inexpensive Amiga networking card to hook my A3000 up to the net.