Have you seen the video that former Microsoft CEO "Steve Ballmer" most wanted to destroy?
In 1986 he once made a commercial that looked like this.
Does this expression look like a cottage advertisement? Properly black history. The content shown by the computer in this video ad is unusual, it is Windows 1.0.
Yes, what is running in this computer is the grandfather of all Windows systems now. But today we are not talking about Windows 1.0, but the milestone that drove the rapid development of personal computers, Windows 95!
How successful was Windows 95? It set an amazing record of selling 7 million copies in the first five weeks of its opening.
With the global popularity of Windows 95, computer hardware, games and software have been mushrooming like a spring. Nowadays, although smartphones have replaced many functions of computers, it can still be said that almost every household in the city has at least one computer. And to this day, the Windows operating system remains the absolute dominant force in home computers.
In this episode, let's take a few minutes to see what the Windows 95 launch, which changed the trend of computer development 27 years ago, looks like, which few people in China have seen.
Now the launch is usually hosted by the company's CEO or senior management, so when this host brother appeared I thought it was something then Microsoft's senior management, only to find out that he was a talk show host.
The whole time he was telling some American jokes, but it felt quite awkward at times, and what he said was basically useless. Then the familiar Bill Gates came on stage.
At that time looked still very young, but actually 40 years old. Bill Gates' speech is still relatively stable, basically similar to the feeling of the CEO in the launch now.
In this launch Bill Gates has been emphasizing that Windows 95 has undergone extensive testing to ensure the stability of the system. But if you have used Windows 95 you should know that the crash and the famous blue screen are from here.
It is estimated that at that time Bill Gates has also been fearful of Windows95 site death or blue screen. System instability until 6 years later Window XP has been better improved.
Since this is an OS launch, it is natural to show what the system looks like. Do any of you have friends who are seeing the Windows 95 interface for the first time?
If it's the first time you see this interface, won't you find it almost identical to the current Windows interface?
After 27 years, except for Windows 11, which put the Start menu in the middle of the taskbar by default, the Windows interface is almost the same as that of Windows 95, only more beautiful. The launch event also showed the video playback function of Windows 95, the taskbar multi-window switch, and the "Send" menu to copy files to a floppy disk through the right mouse button.
These are the most familiar features for us, but at the time was extremely stunning.
Next Bill Gates compared the Windows 3.1 system with Windows 95. Not only was the interface better looking, but thanks to better resource control, programs that would report errors under Windows 3.1 would run perfectly on Windows 95.
This at the time only a few hundred K to a few megabytes of memory on the computer, can be said to be extremely advanced technology. Then the launch site to find two audience members, including the big brother full of CD-ROM is very blinking.
You know that 95 years CD-ROM has just become popular not long ago, a CD-ROM is not cheap, this big brother to get a I can only say is a disguised show of wealth. The two viewers were taken to another room, and then sat in front of two computers respectively.
At first I thought it was for them to operate Windows 95, but in fact, the rich brother's computer was to show how to upgrade from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, while the other woman's computer was to show the plug-and-play and autorun functions. "Plug and Play" can be called an innovation until today. Before Windows 95, most computer operating systems did not have the ability to automatically recognize hardware, and the hardware supported was very limited. Windows 95 broke this situation by automatically scanning for hardware changes, building in a large number of device drivers, and being able to install various hardware devices through the drivers provided by the manufacturer.
We have all heard of "DIY" computers, or what is now known as "saving machines". You choose different CPUs, motherboards, graphics cards, etc. and assemble them yourself. Without the advent of Windows 95, this would not have been possible. That's why Windows 95 has so much significance.
Windows 95 was also the first 32-bit operating system, allowing for a significant increase in overall performance, as well as a built-in 16-bit DOS system that could run independently for compatibility. The release also mentioned that Windows95 supports long file names. It is important to know how inconvenient it was that before Windows95, a file name could only be a maximum of 8 characters.
It was not until Window95 that file names broke the 8-character limit.
The site also demonstrated how to install network printers through Windows95, which was a very tedious operation in the previous system, but in Win95, just drag and drop and install the driver according to the hardware wizard on the line, everything becomes so simple.
Win95 also has a built-in "permission management system", which allows administrators to control the use of other computers through permissions, such as making the host's computer unable to open games on site.
This is also a very useful feature for businesses.
The promotional video shown in the middle shows that a large number of companies already use the Windows 95 operating system for their daily work.
The next shows the Windows 95 autoplay feature, which should be no stranger to you. Put a CD in the CD-ROM drive and you can start playing the game directly. When you put in the CD-ROM, it will automatically run the program specified on the CD-ROM, thus avoiding tedious and complicated clicks by the user.
The intent was good, but it also became a favorite feature of a large number of viruses. So much so that at the time, they were all trying to find various ways to stop autorun. But when this feature first appeared it could also be said to be amazing. And there was also a flying joystick operating peripheral, which shows how well Win95 supports hardware.
In another promotional video shown at the scene, another familiar software appeared, that is, Photoshop. then the version or 3.0, now look at the interface and the latest version of PS is not much different.
Then came the turn of learning, multimedia learning software has also developed since then. Many of you in front of the screen should have used various learning software on Windows systems when you were a child. It all started with Win95.
In addition to Windows 95, another classic software was also released at the conference site, which is Office 95.
This is also the early version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint that we use now. To this day we can't work without these software. Live demonstration of Excel in Office 95, adding tables directly to Word by dragging and dropping and sending them to leaders via email.
This feature triggered a lot of applause and was also epoch-making, and the PPT was basically the same as what we have now.
It has been 27 years since these features are still not out of date, which shows how innovative Microsoft was at the time.
The next demonstration is the MSN service, and the MSN chat software. This MSN chat software is called "MSN Messenger", which was very popular in China for a while, and can be said to be the biggest competitor of QQ, widely used in the office, just like the nail now.
Unfortunately, Microsoft itself does not compete, and finally disappeared completely. But now Windows 11 has built-in Teams chat software, which can be seen as another rebirth of "MSN Messenger".
The release also showed the rare Microsoft Windows 95 homepage. We compare it with the current Windows 11 homepage and can feel the changes brought by technological progress.
Windows 95, the blue sky and white clouds background, is not a lot of people still remember?
How many of you remember that there was a Windows 95 Plus that brought various themes to the system to make it more beautiful.
I didn't realize that the theme feature has been available since Windows 95 27 years ago. Including this 3D pinball game. For those who have played it, please tell us your impressions of this game. It's so classic!
Didn't think so, it's been around since Windows 95 too!
Finally Microsoft's senior vice president made an appearance with a huge retail box of Windows 95 and thanked all the people involved in the development of Windows 95.
The official promotional video for Windows 95 was played next. The music was composed and sung by the Rolling Stones.
The launch also brought a surprise at the end of the event, with a backdrop that opened right up and behind it were all the Windows 95 developers standing in the square. It was a great feeling. Microsoft at that time was really full of creativity at all times.
From this moment on, the era belonging to the computer has come! When we use Windows computers now to play games, surf the Internet and watch videos, please don't forget this moment in history 27 years ago. Windows 95 not only changed the era of computers, but also changed the future of you and me!
I'm David Dale. If you find the content useful, I hope you can like, follow and retweet it. You are also welcome to talk about the operating systems you have used and how you feel about them in the comments section. See you in the next issue!
