Anyone remember when Windows 3.11 came out in 1992? It was the best thing ever (back then). Most importantly it featured native networking support and endless fun with Minesweeper (we used to make contests for it).
Then, Windows 95 came out (you guessed it, in 1995) and wow, people lined up in the streets to get a first glimpse of the new face lift. I hated Win95 because I found it too fancy, whereas all the programs we used at the University were mainly for Windows 3.11 and weren't compatible with Win95 yet. So, by necessity, we couldn't upgrade so were happily using Win 3.11 for a while. The biggest features in Win 95 were 32-bit applications and the introduction of Plug-n-Play (PnP) to automate device detection and configuration. Of course, the process was still in its infancy and was buggy like hell. Ask anyone who tried to setup a modem under Win 95... However, tech savvy users like myself often had to fall back to manual configuration, something we learned to do in Win 3.11 (along with DOS 6.22 config.sys and autoexec.bat). So yeah, even when the software got upgraded to run on Win 95, I still hated it, it just didn't work as I was used to. But as time went by and Windows 98 came out (in 1998) things got a little bit better with USB devices. And finally the Win9x saga ended with Windows ME (Millenium) in 2000, which nobody gave a shit about. All the Win9x lineage was MS-DOS-based, so the skills I learned in Win 3.11 always came in handy when building computers for my friends.
In 2000, Windows 2000 was released (thank you Microsoft for letting us know the years of your releases). But Win 2k was different, it was based on NT (New Technology). It was the successor to NT 4.0 which was used for servers. And boy did I love Windows 2k! This OS was stable like a rock. Hardly any crashes or BSOD's, the GUI was simple and efficient. This was it for me, finally something I can work with without having to worry about DOS configurations, device detection and crashes. Why? Because NT doesn't rely on DOS anymore, as simple as that. As a matter of fact, all the future versions of Windows would be NT-based.
The next major version of Windows NT, Windows XP, was released in 2001. And Microsoft was at it again, trying to sell more by adding more fanciness to the GUI. And you guessed it, I hated Win XP. I remained loyal to Win 2k for years, before I moved to Win XP. And even after I did, I reconfigured the GUI to look exactly the same as Win 2k. My productivity relied on a simple and efficient environment.
In 2006, Windows Vista came out... nobody gave a shit. Things were already running smoothly with Win XP SP1, SP2 and SP3 (many service packs bringing more stability and improvements) why settle for a shitty OS (again).
The OS that ruled them all came in 2009, Windows 7 (Hmmm I wonder why M$ didn't call that one Windows 2009). At first I had some reservations before upgrading to Win 7, because all my production was setup and customized under Win XP, I really didn't have time to reinstall and reconfigure everything. Besides, M$ had a long history of messing up with new OS's, so I waited a while before making the leap. Which I finally did, and again, I set up my Win 7 GUI to look like Win 2k, simple and efficient.
In 2012, Windows 8 came out... nobody gave a shit.
The major factor to upgrading was the way papa Bill forced users to upgrade. Dropped support for older hardware, introduction of DirectX versions that do not run on older OS's and are embedded so users couldn't install them on the previous OS's! So if you wanted to buy a new computer and play cool new games on it, you had to use the latest Windows! And this is still true today with Windows 10 (embedded DX12) which released in 2015 because nobody gave a shit about Win 8, hell, they even skipped Windows 9!
Win 10 is the pinnacle of M$ arrogance and disregard for its customers. They morphed a god damn PC OS to look like a cellphone, and I thought Michael Jackson looked ugly after his 1000 surgeries! WTF is that about? And forget your privacy, because M$ insidiously added a thousand tracking and telemetry mechanisms to spy on its users, and that cannot be disabled easily. And even if you did, some of the telemetry features will reinitialize themselves when you do updates, so you have to disable them again.
So here I was, been using Win 7 for the last 7 years (magic number). I upgraded my PC hardware this week and I'm forced to use Win 10 because the motherboard companies aren't supporting Win 7 for their latest processor chipsets. Trying to configure Win 10 to look like Win 2k is a daunting task. The results aren't perfect, but close enough, no choice anyways. Windows has been a love and hate relationship for decades, I can honestly speak for many when I say that. Some of the releases were fantastic, some were utter crap. Right now we're in the crap phase and we have no choice but to swallow and get used to it.
Thank you M$ for ruining my desire to cling to old working things.
Goodbye Windows 7, I already miss you... In the meantime, I'll reinstall my old CPU+DDR3+mobo+Win7 in another PC case and visit it when I feel nostalgic.
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Well now. That took me back. I started my computer days running TRSDOS in the early 80's and did not get into MS-DOS 3.0 until I went to collage in the late 80's. That was back in the day when my TRS-80 Model IV had a mind staggering 128Kb of memory, no hard drive and two 360K floppy disk drives for $2500CDN in 1984! I had to buy a graphics board for $150 just to get 640x480 graphics capability on my green mono-screen.
I learned how to use visicalc, the first spreadsheet, Scriptsit for word processing and Disk Basic for programming the darn thing. I wrote my own space invaders game, which may seem trivial now, but was way cool back then!
I also had a maze program and attempted to program a three dimensional engine to move through the maze. Too bad I gave up on that little project. I could have done well as the idea was years ahead of any of the three dimensional games that came out later on.
We have come a long way and I marvel at the progress over the last 40 years!
Yes, my very first video game was pong!
Which I played on our black and white TV which looked something like this:
Nice post! Thank you for taking me back through memory lane!
Awesome man, old school. Pong you say? My first gaming was on the legendary Atari 2600 and my friend's ZX Spectrum. I miss those chiptunes.
lol. Those were the days. Simplicity and we still had fun! Most people would be bored to tears playing them now. hahaha
The foundation for everything technical I know today began in MS-DOS 5, on a 486 with 2MB of memory. I skillfully tweaked my config.sys and autoexec.bat to make this machine run like a champ. Today, I too am woefully resigned to Windows 10 and all it's shortcomings.
And let's not forget, with version 3.11 it became Windows for Workgroups, highlighting the advent of local PC networking.
This was a great recounting of the painful growing pains of Windows, thanks for putting this together and sending me off reminiscing.
We have seen technology move from generation to generation, now we don't even know what next to expect.
Just when we are getting use to a old software another shows up. We must keep following the trend to be up to day. It good to hear you now run on windows 10, but hope these guys aren't planning on releasing windows 11 or 12 soon.
Wow you reminded me of Windows 3.1 (memory folder loading right now), that was the one 'for workgroups' wasn't it? I can remember when Win95 arrived and it was epic (right on point the comment about installing the us robotics modem... it had some issues with the first 3dfx video cards lol) 😂 😂 😂, haven't used a pc in a while but the last one I saw yeah the desktop looked like a tablet 😕
US Robotics, 3Dfx... old school words. I still have my first 3Dfx card, that thing was a huge beast, at some point I couldn't fit it in my computer, I had to swap some other cards around. Sadly, computers are mainly turning into phones and tablets nowadays. But nothing can beat a desktop PC.
Technology keep on making life easy everyday. Though there are still some features in window 7 that i cannot just forget but we just have to step up in technology.
Thanks for refreshing brain through this post
We did come a loooong way. I was Mind blown when I first saw 3.11. The memories !!
i was pretty young but i remember the little paperclip helper that would pop up😂😂
OMG that thing... DISABLED IT. Now we have Cortana (M$ thinks the users are still stupid), 10000000x more annoying.
haha in 10 more years we will probably have a hologram that pops up in real world situations with" tips and hints "🤣
Ah, I can remember lots of fond memories with my Windows 98. My family skipped 95 so I was using 3.1 for years. Everything about 98 blew my mind. The ability to watch a VCD on a computer was ground breaking in the family. We would all watch VCDs on the computer instead of the TV lol
I have my old laptop from uni that has windows 95 on it and it wasn't colour, does that count? I remember I was one of the first few people to have a laptop and I tried bringing it to class to take notes and the stares and the sound of typing was too distracting, today I am sure it would be more odd to take notes on paper with a biro!
I'm still amazed by my phone being such a powerful computer. It makes me wonder what technology actually exists already, as they say the military usually has tech that is 25 years ahead of what is released.
You know, plasma TV's for example existed from the early 80's (very expensive), but it wasn't until the early 2000's that they became popular (for a while, until LCD TV took over) with the advent of HDTV. The cellphone was invented in 1973, and only got mainstream in the late 90's. Even when the laser was invented in the 50's, nobody could find any application for it... today, we can't imagine our technologies without lasers! It's all about usefulness at the right time.
It's so true. Right now I currently am still using windows 7 as it is my preferred choice :)
Wait until you upgrade the hardware :(
I hate windows 10 so much.
It sucks and is unstable, and they didn't include a way to adjust touchpad sensitivity until recently, that is some basic shit right there. Mostly I hate it for killing my old computer though. I was happily using XP and then the fucking windows 10 virus killed my whole computer. That shit is not right.
i have win 3.1 running in a VM just for fun LOL
i'm learning all new linux shit - sick and tired of all the MS install keys and activation
not to mention the EULA says MS can just jump into your machine anytime they feel like it - FUCK THAT
I work in IT, I guess I'm too much of a youngin to remember the non-NT days (only used Macs at home, first PC experience was XP). I'm surprised at the hate for Win 10. Win 8 was a much bigger UI disaster, especially with Sever 2012 using the same UI for some inexplicable reason. However Win 7 was bloated and Win 8 made a host of changes that made most of my PCs perform better, start-up faster, etc. Win 10 functionally is the best of both. Of course they stupidly fractured the settings and moved in more of an Apple direction with how they force certain features on you, but the underlying architecture was great.
People shit on Vista, but most people disregard the fact that Windows 7 is basically Vista SP2. That really seems to be MS's MO. Improve the architecture and basically beta test it for an entire release cycle, then actually make something useful.
3.1, 98, win2k, windows 7.... in brief, the shining moments of windows history.
Thanks for the update, because I've been wondering if it's still reasonable to use windows 7, the most reliable windows variety to date. Windows 10, no thank you. I'm all penguin now. Which is not perfect, but way easier to work with than it was back when win2k was in it's glory.
I worked with linux for a long time in the past using specialized science software. However, most of my apps run on windows, so I'm stuck with it.
hmm... at this point I think i'm just refusing to use anything windows... I might set up a windows partition, but win10 is super lame and slow :-\
Whether it's slow or not, my new hardware is surely making a huge difference. Intel Core i5 8th generation + Samsung NVME = blazing fast. Takes like 15 seconds to boot up. Everything is running super fast, at least I got that to comfort me :)
I agree entirely win2k was the best. I use win7 for work but for everything else I use Linux.
I’ve even got a boxed set of msdos 7.1 floppy disks in mint condition lying around somewhere
As millenials would say: what is a floppy disk?
Exactly! I used to have some 9 inch floppies also. And the computer that came with it. Back then my mother got sick of the huge computer sitting around and dumped it. I found out a few years later it was worth $20,000. I’d hate to think what it’s worth now as that was a while ago. One of the biggest regrets I have
I get tempted to build a machine based on the OS/2 Warp project. Yet, another great idea by IBM that failed in marketing and execution.
I never experimented with OS/2, but a friend told me you could start running apps on OS/2 while it was installing! How's that for a superior OS?
I helped my dad install OS/2 Warp and we got everything running and he used it for a couple of years, until the drivers stopped being updated and eventually I told him he would have to go to windows.
As always, it is about getting hardware and software support. BlackBerry BB10 is a superior mobile OS, but it didn't get the right support and failed.
We got to move on with new things cos we can't use old things forever just like windows
I also love window 7 and used to it and scared this same thing could happen but I got no choice than to take it
Such is life. New things everyday
Hahahaha i was also really into Windows XP and Vista then but i don't know why i never really fancy windows 7 with the higher versions. Maybe i kinda got used to the old ways hahaha or i am not willing to start learning a new but then, i didn't want to change it. Haha.
That's what bothered me, everytime they released a new OS I had to re-learn things, lose support for older apps and hardware. Very annoying and counter-productive.
Totally true. There was a friend who came to me for help with his system and he started using windows 7 then and being my first time of seeing and using it, i felt like a complete novice to the guy and i was so pained haha. So much learning to do to keep up with new development. Sometimes they even make the upgrade compulsory which makes people lose interest especially when an application depends on it.
Lol minesweep....me and my sis kept competing which one will get the best time on it.....but i also loved win 95 tbh :3
Win2k classic interface remained my Win interface until I stopped maintaining a network for a charity and thus didn’t work with with Windows anymore.
2k was awesome, especially SP4. I still have much love for Win2k.
Configuring a modem was one of the most challenging elements under NT4.0 too, especially if part of a PBX board. Took me almost two complete days to get things going properly!
The whole windows 10 privacy thing is annoying as hell but aside from that, I think windows 10 is a better OS than the windows 7 (yes nobody givesa fuck about windows 8 and windows 8.1. They were the height of Microsoft's shitty OS line. Like WTF were those?
Windows 10 no doubt brought about some performance improvements and made multitasking a tad bit more impressive even if they messed up on the privacy end of things.
Cortana is fucking annoying.
I guess windows 10 was the most bold update by the company and a pinnacle for there future.
Thank u for the post, u remind me of some good days on playing and trying 100 bombs, have u ever completed it?
Hell yeh, I completed it countless times :)
The good old days 😭😭😭
You made me have to play some minesweeper. lol This version is way harder than the one I remember though.
http://minesweeperonline.com/
realy nice post.great history.good technology.good job.
haahha .. nice artical men .. thanks for sharing . kee it up :)
lovely post about technology....its also very helpful..so thanks for sharing...keep it up
Your post reminds me my clumsy day of using computer.
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Gosh! I'm pretty young here and have directly seen windows and operated them. Windows XP probably. Only read about all this technical stuff in the textbooks! Well, Not my problem :)
That’s why you get a Mac
Oh, the good old minesweeper! Got me nostalgic... ;)
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