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by mschaef 3376 days ago
This is a good article, but keep in mind the timeframe it writes about. Not only was it 22 years ago, its writing about systems at the bare minimum system requirements. (Personally speaking, I remember speccing out a previous gen Windows 3.1 machine with 8MB of RAM in 92... and this is covering 4MB systems in 1995. By that time, 8-16MB would've been common.)

Another story from the time is that I went to CompUSA (as a 'spectator') on the night of the Windows95 release. (It was a midnight release and the stores were open late.) There was a line out the door that snaked around through the store past the Windows 95 boxes, the Plus Pack, boxes, MS Office, and then the memory upgrade desk...
4 comments
Steeeve 3376 days ago
I worked there at the time. That line didn't go away, it lasted for days. It was reminiscent of empire strikes back. 4MB SIMMS at that time were more expensive than 4GB sticks today. People had 16MB of RAM, but that was mostly reserved to gamers and programmers. Or Macs at graphics design shops.
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bitwize 3376 days ago
The Windows 95 hypetrain was truly something to behold. The Empire State Building lights in Windows colors, Friends castmembers appearing in a (truly lame) promotional video... Windows 95 was the release that put the phrase "operating system" on the common man's lips -- for better or worse.
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movedx 3376 days ago
I'd never heard of this "Friends castmembers" video, so I did a bit of YouTubing... I have no words (nearly an hour long, and I think there's a part-two): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGYcNcFhctc

This led me to a few other videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2owaKucyU1Y

Sigh. The 90s.

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Arizhel 3375 days ago
The 90s were really great in a lot of ways. But as you've shown, it was really awful in a few others.

I wonder if there's a parallel universe out there where Windows 95 never happened and Microsoft went out of business somehow. That would be the universe where the 90s were a truly wondrous age.

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digi_owl 3376 days ago
Heh, still recall having to use a special bootloader that would load a BIOS extension, or some such, because the new HDD i got, so that i could run Win95 and still have room for anything else, was not compatible with my 486 otherwise.

Even given that i can't help think computing was less complicated back then.

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Const-me 3376 days ago
People even composed songs about Win95 hardware requirements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Eti38Vzkk

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