Windows 95 celebrating its 20th Anniversary today 24-Aug-2015

Windows 95 was launched exactly 20 years ago, August 24th 1995. It was the first 32 bit Windows, a major step towards today's Windows operating systems introducing such elements like Taskbar and Start button / menu today's users take for granted. Personally I can still remember how amazed I was to see this fantastic multi-tasking Windows after being used to the simplicity of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

Windows 95 (codenamed Chicago) is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released on August 24, 1995, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products.

Windows 95 integrated Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Windows products. It featured significant improvements over its predecessor, Windows 3.1, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its relatively simplified "plug-n-play" features. There were also major changes made at lower levels of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly 16-bit architecture to a pre-emptively multitasked 32-bit architecture.

Accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, Windows 95 was a major success in the marketplace at launch and shortly became the most popular desktop operating system. It also introduced numerous functions and features that were featured in later Windows versions, such as the taskbar, the 'Start' button, and the way the user navigates. It was also suggested that Windows 95 had an effect of driving other major players (including OS/2) out of business, something which would later be used in court against Microsoft.

From: Windows 95 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An early Windows 95 commercial:



For you youngsters out there, both computing, operating systems and Internet were something different back then. For a nostalgic kick here's an example website, one of the few still existing which has been kept exactly as it was back then in mid 90's (actually, this website was launched a bit over a year later than Windows 95). The site is archived by Warner Bros and was made to promote their movie Space Jam.

Here's the site, a typical example of websites in mid 90's: Space Jam

Read more about the Space Jam website: 'Space Jam' Forever: The Website That Wouldn't Die | Rolling Stone

A video about Windows evolution:



Kari

Quite a few people have it still running on a virtual machine, if not for other reasons but for nostalgic memories and fun of it.

Kari said:

Quite a few people have it still running on a virtual machine, if not for other reasons but for nostalgic memories and fun of it.

I'm even old enough to get a kick out of running MS-DOS 6.2 in a VM...

Funny I just noticed this post because I was just commenting to my son that, even though I'm now using Windows 10, I still have those annoying desktop.ini files on my desktop because one of the first things I do on a new system is to set explorer to show all hidden and system files. I told him him I've seen those for 10 years, ever since Windows 95. Seeing your 20 now makes me realize I should probably brush up on my conversational math skills too.