He sends me this picture today with the title “See how happy people were when Windows 95 came out”
I sent this back titled "after they tried to install it.
35 Spice ups
I think the riots we see going on right now describes when they installed Windows ME. But for the time. Windows 95 was pretty decent for a Windows 98 Beta
4 Spice ups
I have to disagree. I was working retail and the number of issues we had with video cards and audio cards pretty much made us pray for Geoworks.
dbeato
(dbeato)
4
Albeit I was 5 but it couldn’t be worse than this
6 Spice ups
The good old days when installing Windows just so much FUN unlike today where nothing ever goes wrong.
1 Spice up
Back then it was the proprietary media card that IBM installed in most of their PC’s and the NEC gaming machines that caused the most problems.
1 Spice up
The only problems I had with Win 95 was deciding whether I’d like to use the sound card OR the mouse… 98 was so much better at that kind of thing.
2 Spice ups
I remember trying to get it installed on an IBM microchannel PC. That was a pain in the ass.
lamocon
(lamocon)
11
Man…my first legit OS was 98 (second edition?), so I never had the joy of being able to experience 95. That being said, I finally decommissioned an old monitoring PC that had XP on it a couple years ago and I could barely navigate the environment. People may talk trash about Windows 10 but if I had to experience 98 or ME all over again, I’d buy a Mac.
1 Spice up
I agree! The only time I was semi-enthused was when Win98 OSR2 came out, even though I still hated to set things up to run on our NetWare 4.x environment, at least it wasn’t as bad as Win95, but, I digress 
1 Spice up
patti8216
(Patti8216)
13
Oh my, geeks ruining the Stones with no rhythm.
I ran ME for years, no more complaints than any other operating systems for me.
maxdenton
(Brazbit)
16
I did tier one Windows 95 tech support shortly after release. I think I answered more calls during that six months than in all the years of technical support that followed.
A complete new UI built around a completely new paradigm. Closest dramatic change since was Windows 8, which wasn’t nearly as drastic.
Completely new drivers that were incompatible with all that came before so tons of devices and systems were unable to work or were reduced to the most basic functionality until when, or if, the manufacturer released new drivers. Many without access to the Internet access yet to get those drivers.
Many users lacked even the most basic computer knowledge. The amount of first time users was staggering. We had one tech that had an older user on the line, it took nearly a half hour to get the user to get a floppy disk inserted into the drive in the correct orientation… there were more than 20 floppies to get 95 installed. Others bought the CD version… no CD drive, but it fit in the 5 1/4" floppy drive so the problem must be Microsoft… Users that didn’t own a mouse for their computer. EGA/CGA/Tandy/Hercules/MGA graphics cards. On and on and on.
Most of the problems were self inflicted, such as above. Not that the program was flawless by any means but I would say that easily 85% of the calls were systems that were not ready for Windows 95 or users that lacked basic skills and knowledge. On the plus side we were able to work through the user issues and identify what exactly most users needed to do and where to get assistance hardware/driver wise. I think I had one call it those six months that I had to pass up the line, the vast majority were customer serve/education and simple fixes.
I would never want to do front line support on that scale ever again, but it was definitely an interesting experience.
3 Spice ups
I didn’t have near as many problems with windows 95 and as I did with Windows 8. What an abomination.
Windows 98 was pretty decent by SP2, other than the annoying habit of slowing down after 6 months forcing a clean reinstall of the system. After that, I’ve not had many problems with the OS, other than becoming familiar with the GUI. Windows 10 is pretty decent after 5 years.
2 Spice ups
I don’t mind bashing a terrible OS like Windows ME, but we tend to forget that it was the first Windows version to have System Restore (which has saved my bacon several times!) that carried over to every version since.
c-j-r
(C.J.R.)
20
That’s right, Win 95 came in a BIG box, so you hade the idea you actualy bought a product.
Actualy all you got was a license to use the software.
