It was an exciting time....

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RomanOswald@reddit

OMG I had that tower. Some 486 with an Pentium 133 Overdrive…

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JollyQuiscalus@reddit

"A $24.95 value"

Was Internet Explorer a standalone commercial product at the time, or is this just marketing nonsense?

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waydownindeep13_@reddit

No. It was included in Microsoft Plus! 95.

Later versions of the OS would include it. Some even included Windows Plus! 95. But the original software package was an add-on, not part of the operating system.

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I don’t think folks are answering your real question. To my memory, IE never had a paid version like Netscape did. They always bundled for free. So you are correct, there was no $24.95 standalone version. They did the same thing with their web server by bundling with Windows NT to dick over Netscape on both ends.

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Lake3ffect@reddit

In the early days, most web browsers were commercial software. That’s why MS was slapped with the antitrust suit when they started including IE with Windows for “free”, iirc

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Gr8fulFox@reddit

Way back in the "Before Times", you couldn't download the Internet browser of your choice for free, because they were new software, so you had to purchase it (one time fee, thankfully), and that's not including how your Internet usage was billed at the time.

So, having a free web browser included with the OS for no apparent extra charge could be considered a value if you were planning on getting on the Internet, anyway.

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nastyreader@reddit

Thank you for reminding me the trauma I had to suffer 30 years ago. /s

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texasbob2025@reddit

Yes we could actually name stuff in a way that made since not 8+3

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Creepy_Basis_4869@reddit

The long file names were revolutionary!

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Maeglin75@reddit

Many people talk about XP as the revolutionary Windows for consumers, but I think that this title belongs to Windows 95. There was still a lot of old stuff from the 16Bit/DOS era under the hood, but for the actual user it mattered more what changed on the surface.

Long file names, preemptive multitasking, games in Windows instead of DOS thanks to DirectX, more system resources available thanks to 32Bit (in Windows 3.X you could choke the system by having too many GUI elements on screen, like multiple calculators etc.).

The Windows 95 GUI was a real breakthrough after the confusing mess of Win3.X. With taskbar and start menu it established what we are still using today and is copied by other OS.

And all of that with a sleek, modern look. (Today Microsoft struggles to make the UI of a 5 years old OS look consistent.)

Windows 95 was the first Windows that was actually fun to use. All other version after it only felt like minor improvements.

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saraseitor@reddit

to think that classic MacOS never actually had preemptive multitasking and they had to wait until the new century to get it with OS X

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JasonMckin@reddit

👀🤔

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KW802@reddit

At the time I was working PT at the local Egghead and it was wild. It's hard to describe to the current crop of IT folks how the Win95 public release was an event because they just respond with something like "... for Windows?!". Heck, even the concept of a physical software store is lost on them. 😳

I may still have some of the Microsoft swag packed away in boxes.

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zero-cooler@reddit

I miss physical software stores. I liked looking at the boxes. I liked the manuals and other things you got when you purchased software. You felt like you actual got something when you bought it.

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saraseitor@reddit

yes I agree it was fun to look at the artwork in the boxes, read the descriptions. An experience very similar to renting VHS in a video store. All of that is gone now

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saraseitor@reddit

yes it was! I was 13 and I remember reading all the magazines I could about Windows 95 in preparation for the release. The first version I ever tried was in floppy disks and we tried it on my dad's computer instead of the family computer just in case it had any issues. I was fascinated. I remember this time very fondly

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jalp21_@reddit

Wow, this made me feel old and nostalgic 😂🙏, but thank you for posting it!!!! 🙏🙏🙏...

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Opp-Contr@reddit

No it wasn't. This was a buggy layer over DOS 6 that pumped alot of resources.

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SadPhilosopherElan@reddit

I don't think anyone's ready for what the Canadians'll do this time

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TMWNN@reddit

?

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SadPhilosopherElan@reddit

Wow I think i stayed up too late scrolling or smth I have no idea what this means

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Few_Departure_6830@reddit

yes indeed, it was something that never happened after...Win98 or any other after was not that big.

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Tartan-Pepper6093@reddit

The real fun was adding Windows 95 Plus! Complete skins, including sound effects, screen savers, goofy icon themes, all officially supported! who knew Microsoft could lighten up a little, and even had a sense of humor? Miss it, wish Microsoft still did this kind of thing instead of whatever they’re trying to do with Windows 11.

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Life-Breadfruit-3986@reddit

Did u get any cool screen savers with that? I remember there being some extras on that era of windows but couldn't get them with the basic install of the os

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Tartan-Pepper6093@reddit

Yes, all related to the theme. Spooky theme like had a haunted house for a screen saver where doors and windows and owls and bats and stuff would all move around, I think with accompanying sounds. There was a jungle theme, a sea life theme, a sports theme, probably more I can’t remember but each with a complete icon suite, themed pointers, wacky desktop sound effects, wallpaper, theme-specific desktop colors and fonts for title bars, buttons, window backgrounds and stuff, and the screensaver. And you could mix n’ match any of these elements into your own thing if you wanted. It was great!

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Life-Breadfruit-3986@reddit

That sounds like a lot of fun. Think I'll look into getting that if I can get some PCs from the win95 era

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Vitamin_J94@reddit

I remember the Elvis pointer. Look at that pixel, that thing is huge!

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Just_to_rebut@reddit

whatever they’re trying to do with Windows 11.

Make money and gather data to sell to advertisers and the government.

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mikegalos@reddit

Well, when people voted with their wallets to take free or cheap Google stuff in exchange for giving Google the right to sell them to advertisers that became the only option.

Want ad-free software that respects your privacy? Pay for it with cash not personal information.

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Just_to_rebut@reddit

I paid for Microsoft Professional version for my last pc build a d paid for a permanent license to MS Office. It still downloaded Cortana, requires me to make a Microsoft account to install Office, defaults to saving to OneDrive rather than my local computer, and reports data about my system that I can’t opt out of.

This isn’t the customer’s fault. It’s an intentional intrusion into our privacy and right to own what we buy.

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mikegalos@reddit

Nope. Your professional version price is wildly subsidized by ad revenue. Office used to be considered a bargain at $500/seat with people buying $100-200 upgrades annually.

This is the "I want it free and it's unfair to expect me to pay" world that Google got you to jump at.

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Just_to_rebut@reddit

It’s literally not even a choice. Subscriptions and cloud services make them more money than permanent licenses and people storing their information locally so they quite blatantly try to trick people into signing up for them and make it very difficult to download your data and cancel.

No idea why you’re trying to make these deliberate choices by large companies sound like something unreasonable customers forced them to do.

The “I want it free” consumer you’re blaming is irrelevant. Of course some people will take the free version if they don’t care about ads or privacy. But look at how ads are out into the premium subscription tiers of streaming services after promoting themselves as the ad-free option!

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mikegalos@reddit

Subscriptions only exist because people stopped paying for software after Google offered them free software for the rights to use information about them.

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Just_to_rebut@reddit

>Subscriptions only exist because people stopped paying for software

A subscription is literally payment for software, but now it’s on going rather than one time.

How does offering Google docs for free force Office to go subscription based? That just made Office even more expensive.

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mikegalos@reddit

Wow. You really dont understand how dumping kills competition. That's bizarre Oh, and Office is vastly cheaper.

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Just_to_rebut@reddit

Your professional version price is wildly subsidized by ad revenue

Oh.. and this is just wrong. I don’t have any ads on it.

And Office for commercial use vs. personal/education use have completely different pricing. $200-500 was normal around 2010 but few needed to buy upgrades every year. That’s why they’re forcing subscriptions.

Consumers literally just don’t want or need constant upgrades to some software. 90% of people would be fine with Office 2010.

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mikegalos@reddit

It's subsidized because without the high volume ad versions you professional version would cost much more. That's what subsidized means.

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MWink64@reddit

Aside from the fact it's still white, your Presario looks a lot like my Prolinea 4/66.

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DogMedic101stABN@reddit

I went to the midnight release. It was wild.

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Tasty-Fox9030@reddit

Yes it was! Here comes Weezer!

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mikegalos@reddit

As someone at Microsoft at the time and where both my wife and I were connected to Win 95 and got to go to the launch, absolutely!

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KingLim1@reddit

I was just 5 months on the job in MS as a MCS consultant then and we were roped in for the launch. I was managing crowd lines on launch day!

Fun times.

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Just_to_rebut@reddit

>MCS consultant

What‘s that?

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KingLim1@reddit

Maybe little-known outside enterprise customers, but Microsoft did (and still do in another form), a consulting service arm called Microsoft Consulting Services. At that time (1995), we were tasked to advise customers and partners on the best practices for architecture and implementation to deploy and run then-nascent “enterprise” products. MCS was basically a spearhead to penetrate into enterprises for Microsoft. Partners would follow suit to do the actual deployment with MCS (with Premier) in the background, both providing assistance and learning from it. Premier was the paid enterprise support arm of Microsoft then.

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Tartan-Pepper6093@reddit

Of the many things Windows 95 introduced, special kudos to whoever built the TCP stack with the modem driver. You see, before Windows 95 getting online was a tedious fumble-with-the-modem-software-first affair, but with Windows 95 if you started ANY application that needs to get online, the OS would wake up the modem automatically, on-demand, dial the right number and provide the proper stored credentials, and whatever the app is would wait patiently (not crash, not error out) until the connection got established. Smooth and sweet. Could even redial automatically if the connection got interrupted. Well done.

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Fragholio@reddit

Start me up!

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ryfromoz@reddit

Win95 B was amazing

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Tscotty223@reddit

I remember the night I went to Egghead Software and bought my copy of Windows 95 and the Plus pack. August 24th, 1995.

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bleeeer@reddit

“For PCs without Windows” one of the most valuable companies in the world even then and this was the best tag line their marketing departments and engineering teams could come up with.

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ChiefMax86@reddit

Like when you’re loading Windows 95 it says ‘you’re loading Windows 95 for the first time’……..EVER!

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zero-cooler@reddit

I still remember that time. There will never be another time like it.

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JasonMckin@reddit

I wonder if Jay Leno still has any clue what he was launching or how pivotal that summer was for the PC industry.

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mikegalos@reddit

We were at Pebble Beach the weekend before (Lotus was the featured marque at the Monterey Historics and we took my 1966 Europa down) and saw Jay Leno there. Then we were at the Win 95 Launch Event on campus and there he was again. It was a bit strange.

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William-Nilly@reddit

It was big for white box clone builders too.

I was the service manager for a wholesale clone builder at the time. We were shipping around 100 PC’s per month. Before Microsoft introduced the concept of a Registry with Win95, all we had to do to clone a DOS6.22/Win3.11 PC was to xcopy all files from our golden source HDD (IDE) to a bunch of slave HDD’s. I had techs building the hardware while another tech spent his days partitioning, formatting, and xcopy-ing HDD’s. Boring job but necessary. He’d do boxes of HDD’s at a time so that we could build PC’s, run them up and burn them in, and get them out the door quickly.

Then Win95 with its registry came along and that broke our process.

With the additional demand that Win95 created, we went from 100 PC’s per month to around 300 per month for about 6 months. It was obvious that we didn’t have the manpower or time to run the Win95 installer on every PC we sold.

I had heard about this sysprep thing. One of the tech’s mentioned it to me. So I took him off the production line for a week and pointed him at the problem. Within a few days he’d sorted it out. And one night after work, we had a beer and pizza night and he presented the process to us. It was clean. It gave our customers that shrink-wrapped, first time use feel. And it worked. We were back to full capacity, shipping great products at speed.

That was Frank B (from Peninsula Peripherals). Thanks mate. Legend.

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ScientistAsHero@reddit

You are totally channeling Michael MJD in this picture.

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FatYak1972@reddit

I never bought it. I waited for OSR2.

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JasonMckin@reddit

OSR2/950B was as different from original Win95/950 as Win95/950 was from Chicago/73.

They really should have just had yearly brands in the 90s instead of the OSR nonsense. (Win 96 for osr 2, win 97 for osr2.5, etc)

OSR2 (which I call Windows 96) literally had a new DOS 7.1 to support the file system and other updates.

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KARSONJAE@reddit

Have to ask what model Presario this is?

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irowiki@reddit

Too many floppies!

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Kiwi_eng@reddit

Mine was a CD, bought the first minute it was sold.

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VivienM7@reddit

Nitpicky point: that's the wrong edition to be excited about.

The excitement was about the upgrade version (which definitely did not include Internet Exploder) on CD-ROM released on August 24, 1995, not a later version of the full version on floppies.

(As an aside, beautiful Compaq, the plastics look really good and not yellowed...)

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