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Windows 96

windows96.net

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Re: Windows 96

#111

Post by jamal-kumar »

luxuryballs wrote: post #52
thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

I like to think that if we tried installing Windows 10 entirely via floppy disks the floppy drive would fail somewhere around disk 5000.

I remember some japanese person did this for windows 8 for a laugh

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2c5cd026959b010ad57e34...

Re: Windows 96

#112

Post by jamal-kumar »

koyote wrote: post #106
thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

Back in those days re-formatting and re-installing Windows was a very common thing because usually the system would get into some kind of bad state after several months of usage (or at least mine did). I believe I only had a Windows 98 'Upgrade' CD, which could not be used to install on a bare system. This meant I had to first install a previous copy Windows, which in my case was Windows 95 on floppy disks (and I fee…

I just looked it up -- Windows 98 was THIRTY EIGHT floppy disks hahahahaha

Re: Windows 96

#113

Post by pram »

koyote wrote: post #106
thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

Back in those days re-formatting and re-installing Windows was a very common thing because usually the system would get into some kind of bad state after several months of usage (or at least mine did). I believe I only had a Windows 98 'Upgrade' CD, which could not be used to install on a bare system. This meant I had to first install a previous copy Windows, which in my case was Windows 95 on floppy disks (and I fee…

Windows 95/98 definitely decayed over time. Especially after installing stuff like AOL and RealPlayer, your system was like a disgusting cesspool of random trash. I distinctly remember nuking the entire thing would noticeably increase my frame rate in stuff like Homeworld lol

Re: Windows 96

#114

Post by PostThisTooFast »

pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

They were far better because they conveyed the state (and existence) of controls without much-hated skeuomorphism.

"Flat" design is dereliction of design.

Re: Windows 96

#115

Post by qbasic_forever »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #77
pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

Probably due to fewer "discoverable" elements. The Win95 GUI is very up front, there's no "do I click here? or here? or maybe over here?" nonsense.

To be fair the start button at the time was _huge_ and had never been seen before by most PC users. I remember a ton of the Windows 95 advertising, and every single getting started guide spent a ton of time explaining that you just had to click the start button to start doing anything. If you plopped win 95 in front of someone with very little computer experience at the time they'd be pretty confused and try to open all the stuff on the desktop (like how macs worked at the time).

Re: Windows 96

#116

Post by SavantIdiot »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #115
SavantIdiot wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably due to fewer "discoverable" elements. The Win95 GUI is very up front, there's no "do I click here? or here? or maybe over here?" nonsense.

To be fair the start button at the time was _huge_ and had never been seen before by most PC users. I remember a ton of the Windows 95 advertising, and every single getting started guide spent a ton of time explaining that you just had to click the start button to start doing anything. If you plopped win 95 in front of someone with very little computer experience at the time they'd be pretty confused and try to open…

Yes! That's what I mean. It's like Win95 put a lot of effort into that GUI.

There was a PDF on HN long ago about the Win95 research project. I found this, but it's not what I recall (I remember a loooong PDF): https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...

Re: Windows 96

#117

Post by PostThisTooFast »

mopsi wrote: post #15
pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

The old design makes easier to grasp things at a glance, especially in Control Panel. Each icon has a distinct shape and color, in contrast with Windows 10 Settings app that has much more abstract monochrome icons that are difficult to tell apart. Monochrome vector icons make things like dark mode easier to implement. Such small software shops like Microsoft unfortunately cannot afford to hire designers to do multipl…

And yet Windows 95 (and all Windows from 3.1 to Vista) let the user set up global color schemes that were inherited by all applications. I set up a "dark" mode in the early '90s and used it until Microsoft inexplicably REMOVED the entire color-scheme editor... just as everyone started to realize how dumb inverse (black text on white) color schemes are.

Re: Windows 96

#118

Post by pram »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89
thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

I just want to quietly grumble, like an appropriately crotchety old man... '3.5" floppies? Bah! Try 8", and they were really floppy! Try installing AT&T Unix from those...'

Actually if you had the tape it was easier than disks. That was a regression

Re: Windows 96

#119

Post by ddalcino »

deathanatos wrote: post #99
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to quietly grumble, like an appropriately crotchety old man... '3.5" floppies? Bah! Try 8", and they were really floppy! Try installing AT&T Unix from those...'

I'm probably not old enough to qualify as "crotchety old man", but yeah, 3.5" are diskettes to me since they weren't really floppies. I raise your floppy disk install one OS/2 Warp install: https://twitter.com/jhegarty/status/1162326199445655552/phot... I still feel that OS/2 Warp feels more valuable in ones hands, just because of the sheer weight of it… (compared to modern OSes that have no weight because I download…

In middle school I was taught that 5.25" diskettes were "floppies", and 3.5" diskettes were "hard disks", because of the hard plastic case. It was awesome.

Re: Windows 96

#120

Post by qbasic_forever »

systemvoltage wrote: post #13
pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

I predict we're going to come full circle in ~10 years.

Looking forward to Windows 15 looking like DOS Shell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Shell), once we've done a 720 in circles.
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