back to article Windows 95 roars once more in the Microsoft round-up

While storm clouds gathered over the UK in time for the August holiday, all was sunny in world of Microsoft. Except, perhaps, in the Israel office. While Redmond goes toe to toe with Tel Aviv over licencing, what else happened last week in Windows land? Encrypted Skype Microsoft has brought encrypted conversations to Skype. …

  1. Phil Kingston

    I've still got the Windows 95 startup sound as my ringtone. #95foreva

    1. Jude Bradley

      Anything sounds better than that awful Windows ME startup sound.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Floppy Disk Support?

    I don't need it. All my Win'95 games just need a HDD/CD image and I'm good. It'll be interesting though to see what still works from my archives of the CompuServe Windows forum. Time for a trip to the secure storage!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows 95?

    So it's an upgrade from Windows 10 then.

    1. aregross
      Angel

      Re: Windows 95?

      It hasta be... there's 85 more of them!

      1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Windows 95?

        I just can't wait for a port of the Millennium Edition ...

        Runs for cover

        1. RyokuMas
          Coat

          Re: Windows 95?

          Probably a plot by Google/Facebook attempting to divert all the negative attention they've been getting of late by re-igniting hatred for Microsoft among those in the technical arena...

          ... I'll get me coat - it's the one with the tinfoil hat in one pocket and the trollface mask in the other

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Windows 95?

          You better run! we dont mention the Mil******** Edition

        3. Korev Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: Windows 95?

          >I just can't wait for a port of the Millennium Edition ...

          This post is all about ME, ME, ME....

        4. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Windows 95?

          I just can't wait for a port of the Millennium Edition ...

          Hey, that piece of junk will make .5 past lightspeed.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Windows 95?

      "So it's an upgrade from Windows 10 then."

      It's certainly a lesson in what a GUI should look like.

    3. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Windows 95?

      This was a bitter disappointment of an operating system that took us nowhere - pretty start screen notwithstanding - so it's entirely appropriate that it's been wrapped up as an app.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Windows 95?

        "This was a bitter disappointment of an operating system that took us nowhere"

        You have to look at context. The underpinnings were still MSDOS. I'd been using W3 with HP New Era on top of it and that was a distinct improvement, introducing a good few bits of what we now take for granted in GUI which weren't there before. A lot of that seems to have been incorporated into W95 but the scatter of files which held it together were rolled into the Registry. It also introduced some elements of HP VUE which became CDE but its single cascading menu was, in my view, a step in advance of that.

        Its weakness, however, was that it didn't have anything Unix-like under it, nor even VMS-like along the lines of NT. This is maybe not too surprising given the minimal H/W requirement.

        I think it's fair to say that the Registry is a confused and confusing structure. OTOH the Open Desktop stuff underlying the various Unix-like desktops follows on from the New-Era style of multiple files even more widely scattered through the file system.

    4. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Windows 95?

      the purpose of the '95 app (as I see it) is to remind everyone what computing *SHOULD* *BE* *LIKE*

      (Now I might wanna ask the author to put some effort into projects like Wine and ReactOS)

    5. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Windows 95?

      Does it contain the authethic .dll hell where you can overwrite any .dll file with anything else until your system dies a horrible death...

      And that STILL an improvement on win10

  4. Elmer Phud

    GSOD

    Green Screen Of Death - sounds like an enhancement to me

    1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

      Re: GSOD

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_gZ_7sdZg

  5. JimHam

    Excellent!.....

    .....now where are my Monkey Island and Leisure Suit Larry discs.......

    1. Teiwaz

      Re: Excellent!.....

      .....now where are my Monkey Island and Leisure Suit Larry discs.......

      I think you could play most of those already with ScummVM (later Monkey Island games didn't use Scumm system though).

  6. 0laf
    Linux

    W95 probably still does 90% of what most users need and on a footprint hundreds of times smaller than a smartphone OS.I don't remember it taking too long to load up on my P1 200MHz with a it's 20Gb HD (or was that 2Gb I can't remember). It might still be up in my parents attic complete with voodoo 1 add on card although it'll be running 98SE.

    Themehospital FTW.

    1. bpfh

      Methinks...

      That most of my applications will run on NT 4.0... though the lack of built in USB support is a nutache. Cut down Windows 2000 server anyone? 24 meg memory footprint running on a recycled P3 450, adding MySQL, Apache and PHP brought that to 48 meg... and ran part of Kodak France's photo developement tracking systems for more than 2 years. Built and delivered in 2006 on zero budget... I still don't know if I should be proud or ashamed...

    2. MacroRodent
      Windows

      200Mhz

      > P1 200MHz

      I'm not sure such things even existed. My first Pentium was 75Mhz (and did run Windows 95 just fine). I think I have seen a 166Mhz Pentium MMX, but nothing higher than that from Intel, until Pentium II came along.

      1. DJV Silver badge

        @MacroRodent

        Apparently, Intel produced Pentium 1 devices all the way up to 300MHz.

        See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P5_(microarchitecture)#Tillamook

        I built a PC many years ago (probably around 1998) that had a 200MHz Pentium MMX in it.

      2. AJ MacLeod

        Re: 200Mhz

        They definitely did (presumably, do) exist. My Pentium PC was only a 166 though, and not even MMX. Still staggers me to think it cost £1,645 (32MB RAM, with 17" monitor.)

        Its install of Windows 95 (the first version, not OSR2) lasted two years before finally grinding to a complete non-booting halt, when it was replaced by Linux - never looked back since!

      3. adam payne

        Re: 200Mhz

        I built PCs using the original Pentium chips up to 233MHz but after that the Pentium II seemed to take over.

        Of course AMD K6 came out around about that time so I built a hell of a lot of those as well. As well as the old faithful Cyrix 6x86 series.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: 200Mhz

          "As well as the old faithful Cyrix 6x86 series."

          Cyrix Instead.

          1. 0laf
            Gimp

            Re: 200Mhz

            It was a P1 200MHz MMX (an upgrade over the 166) with 16Mb ram (up from 8) and with a 15" crt (upgraded over the standard 14"). Bought from Simply Computers as did a few of my mates. I think it was about £1200 inc an epson inject.

            I remember the company being great to deal with and when I fecked it up within a few days I phoned up and spoke to a bloke who knew exactly what to do. No helldesk no tickets no email. I probably spoke to the bloke the screwed it together.

            Happy days.

            1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

              Re: 200Mhz

              It was a P1 200MHz MMX (an upgrade over the 166)

              I have a dual P1 MMX system down in the basement. Don't remember if they're 200 MHz or 166. Haven't powered it up in a dozen or more years; it probably wouldn't come up, now, and I doubt I have a compatible monitor or keyboard.

              Destined for the next run to the electronics recycling place, I'm afraid. (I kept thinking I'd reuse the cabinet, but at this point that's clearly wishful thinking. Ditto the fine 1989-vintage AS/400 B-series cabinet I have.)

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: 200Mhz

            >Cyrix 6x86 series

            Remember the MBoards for Cyrix that were floating about that had fake cache chips ?

    3. Kubla Cant
      Angel

      20Gb disk? I'm sure Gigabyes were such stuff as dreams are made on in 1995.

      1. 0laf

        Must have been 2Gb. My mate was well jel. He had a 166MHz with a 1.2Gb drive. My beast could play the Weezer music video, his couldn't.

    4. Daniel von Asmuth
      Windows

      Windows '95 = cybercrime

      "W95 probably still does 90% of what most users need"

      90 % of users don't need a computer, but they need food & drink, clothing, shelter, transportation, heating & lighting, health care, protection from evil (put them in prison), forgiveness for their sins & salvation for their souls, entertainment, education, but love they need most.

      You could use Windows '95 for heating; what else? Mostly it crashes regularlty, thereby losing your unsaved files. It has no security whatsoever. it promotes the spreading of virii and other malware. If you need software for it, go looking for the old MS-DOS shareware archives. Furthermore it costs a lot in licensing fees, but your money goes to the Bill & Linda Gates Foundation, which people believe does good things. Then it's mouse causes RSI. On a good day, Windows PCs just waste hours of productivity. Windows '95 does what only Wall Street investors seem to need.

      23 Years old? Is that too late to sue for the damage of WIndows '95 to the people and the economy?

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Windows '95 = cybercrime

        yes but here's what '95 does NOT have:

        a) spyware and adware built-in

        b) 2D FLATSO FLUGLY UI

        c) a 'start thing' with "the Metro" style PANELS in it

        d) touch-friendly aka user-hostile spaces between everything

        e) bright blue on bright white, destroys your eyesight

        f) FORCED UPDATES that take for-freaking-EVAR and dominate your bandwidth, lock you out of using the machine on its own schedule, yotta yotta [and might not work after updating]

        and so on

        I'll take '95 thanks.

        (icon because facepalm)

        1. LewisRage

          "No forced updates"

          Because that went so well with XP right?

  7. MacroRodent
    Windows

    Win95 license?

    What I don't get is how he can include the entire Windows 95 with the app. Has MS made it freeware while I was not looking? (Browsing the Github site did not provide an answer).

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Win95 license?

      I was wondering the same

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Win95 license?

      "What I don't get is how he can include the entire Windows 95 with the app."

      I get the impression he just hopes they don't care.

  8. mythicalduck
    WTF?

    Encrypted Skype?

    Wasn't Skype originally encrypted anyway when it uses peer-to-peer networking? Does that mean they removed it?

    Glad I don't use it any more

    1. Sixtysix
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Encrypted Skype?

      Yes, it appears they did...

      And given where their home office resides, I'm suspicious of the claims of end to end given the way certain TLAs like to eavesdrop.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Encrypted Skype?

      yeah... NSA couldn't handle not listening in. Put out a bid to crack.

      Microsoft accepted, absorbed the software and infected it with back doors.

      Had a good laugh a few years back. Upper management forced the issue to have Skype inside the network.

      ...Then a ransomware attack came in. Guess what our IDS told us???

      1. tim 13

        Re: Encrypted Skype?

        Iain Duncan Smith?

  9. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Win95 roars?

    Don't worry, it shouldn't last long.

    What's the point, trying to break the BSOD World Record?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Love Skype...

    and the 15 pages of exceptions I have to put into my firewall to avoid my Websense Proxy from sniffing the trafffic and crashing the experience.

    There is nothing like "Drop everything and come fix this software for us so we can have a meeting" only to find out you have to exempt every ip address Microsoft owns. This is also a benefit if you are using "Office 365" because it uses the same ignored ips....

    What a concept... Lets get email, office documents, etc. coming into the Corporate network without the sticky entanglement of virus/malware protection.

    Thanks Microsoft!

  11. MVS
    Mushroom

    BSOD - Bill got some

    I was at a Windows World conference in Chicago (96 maybe) and was there when B.G. was proudly demonstrating this new technology called USB; it blue-screened. I suspect some engineers were fired. It was a moment in time, though I was only amused, not gleeful. He probably should have rebooted first.

  12. Luiz Abdala
    Go

    I remember...

    A friend of mine had a game rental store (cartridges for Genesis and SNES back then) running a Windows 3.11 app in a then several-orders-of-magnitude faster Pentium 4 hardware than the 3.11 had ever required.

    It ran on bare metal, no emulation or virtual machine here. And it was FAST.

    It was so fast, in fact, that it could freeze in your face, and he could hit the reset button and finish your order before you could complain it had frozen.

    It was not FAIL-SAFE. It was FAIL-EXPECTED. It WOULD crash, but it could recover in 15 seconds, I kid you not.

    Some lesson can be taken from here... it can fail, as long it doesn't take long to recover. Either this, or you design it not to fail for long periods of time...

    The guy running a Windows 95 (which we loved) over a MacOS (that is nearly failproof) is a god damn GENIUS.

  13. JLV
    Boffin

    and how was that Win 95 ported?

    https://github.com/copy/v86/blob/master/Readme.md

    check out the underlying language for the LOLs. Rodney Dangerfield.

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