Windows Nostalgia - Share it

[PiqueABoo]

Windows NT 3 - At the time I was not that interested, but that would change.

That's Windows NT 3.1. Interested, but everyone was in my world.

I had a version of the NT4 GUI on 3.51 for a while (IIRC it had issues so I took it off again though)

For me one significant moment was MS pulling their finger out and delivering Wolverine (what you had to do before that with 3rd party stuff was a bit of a pain).

Apart from a deployment job (the week before 95 release using a genuine "gold" CD) I managed to avoid Windows 9x in favour of NT family.

PS: I miss the Easter Eggs.

[Quackers]

That's a bit harsh, Vista is effectively a not quite complete WIndows 7. I'm running Vista here because I need 64bit. Yes it's resource hungry, but it doesn't give me many problems.

Not that harsh when you think some of Microsoft's own employees cannot stand Vista.

I still miss NT 4, my favorite Windows OS ever...

[tmcd35]

Here's a Windows related OS of old that hasn't come up yet - Novell Netware. The "2003 Server" of the Windows 3.1 era. Came across it on work experience. The NM I was work shadowing sat me down in front of a NT4 server box (NT4 had only just been released) and ask me to try and work out how to set up a Windows network to eventually replace Netware because he couldn't work it out. To be fair I was extremely green and could barely work out how to boot it up

[googlemad]

I loved the Windows NT 4.0 Workstation login sound!!!

[srochford]

*Shudders*
It was nice for its day but it was also such a pain... You had to reinstall the entire OS if you wanted to convert a DC to a member server or a member server to a DC. Annoying.

Annoying, but hardly the end of the world - it's not something most people need to do on a regular basis!

I think it's always easy to look back and say "version X was rubbish; version X+1 was way better" but (normally!) we don't move through time like that - we start with version X, use it and find that it was better than version X-1. Eventually, X+1 comes along and we wonder why we ever put up with X, let alone X-1

There are exceptions and, sadly, Vista was one of those. It brought loads of good ideas but most of them weren't visible to most users (things like the huge number of group policy settings are completely irrelevant to a home user; the much better tablet support is seen by a tiny number of users; better power management doesn't matter if you use a desktop and so on). What they actually saw was an OS that ran abysmally slowly on hardware that was excellent with XP and kept prompting them whenever they made system changes (even though that behaviour is very similar to Mac OS which most people think is the bestest, shiniest OS ever :-))

[ajbritton]

Here's a Windows related OS of old that hasn't come up yet - Novell Netware. The "2003 Server" of the Windows 3.1 era. Came across it on work experience. The NM I was work shadowing sat me down in front of a NT4 server box (NT4 had only just been released) and ask me to try and work out how to set up a Windows network to eventually replace Netware because he couldn't work it out. To be fair I was extremely green and could barely work out how to boot it up

I grew up with NetWare from v2 through to v4. NetWare had some really nice features for clients at the time such as a rich logon script language. v4 also brought a hierarchical directory service which Windows would not have until the release of Win2K. In some respects, Windows is only just catching up. I could map drives based on OU back in NetWare 4. Sadly though, the servers were always crashing.

[DaveP]

Evolution of versions Windows. From 1.0 to Vista

[maniac]

Funny this thread should come up.

I found this at the back of a cupboard we were clearing out the other day;



Which I then promptly installed onto a virtual machine, anyone remember this . . . .



I also still have stored up in my loft Widows 3.1 and 3.11 on floppy discs, along with loads of old programs like Micrografx Draw, Word 2, Excel 4, Powerpoint 3 etc. and about 6 different version of DOS.

The first network I managed was a Viglen one based on NT4 server, which was amazingly stable really, soo migrated onto a Server 2003 based network thou. We still have some servers running server 2000 on our system, although not for much longer!

Mike.

[DaveP]

...My first Windows was version 3.0. I remember thinking how primitive it was compared with the Macs I'd used an Uni....

Here's another link for you then:

Evolution Of Windows Compared To Mac

[tmcd35]

Here's a very interesting site of your interested in the development of the GUI across the various systems...

Graphical User Interface Timeline

[Little-Miss]

My first experience of Windows was 3.1. I remember somehow making Program Manager think it was called Paintpot or something like that......anyway, i broke it! I must have been about 9 or 10. I remember how amazed i was by 95.
I used 2000 for a long time. That was only out for a year or so before XP came out i think....

[maniac]

My first experience of Windows was 3.1. I remember somehow making Program Manager think it was called Paintpot or something like that......anyway, i broke it! I must have been about 9 or 10. I remember how amazed i was by 95.
I used 2000 for a long time. That was only out for a year or so before XP came out i think....

It was relatively easy to break Windows 3.1. Our old school network (when I used to be at school) was based on it using RM NET LM 2.0. You could circumnavigate a lot of the restrictions by putting an .EXE file in your home folder that was named PROGMAN.EXE which it then used as the shell, and there was another program used used for the quotaing, which again you could circumnavigate by putting a .EXE program named the same as the quota program in your home folder. The genius thing was they gave us Visual Basic 3.0 to play with, which I prompty used to write a live chat program much to the annoyance of the ICT teacher - only because he tried to do the same thing himself, and didn't ever get his to work - mine worked a treat and I believe it carried on circulating around amongst students for another couple of years after I left.

Those were the days!

[sted]

It was relatively easy to break Windows 3.1. Our old school network (when I used to be at school) was based on it using RM NET LM 2.0. You could circumnavigate a lot of the restrictions by putting an .EXE file in your home folder that was named PROGMAN.EXE which it then used as the shell, and there was another program used used for the quotaing, which again you could circumnavigate by putting a .EXE program named the same as the quota program in your home folder. The genius thing was they gave us Visual Basic 3.0 to play with, which I prompty used to write a live chat program much to the annoyance of the ICT teacher - only because he tried to do the same thing himself, and didn't ever get his to work - mine worked a treat and I believe it carried on circulating around amongst students for another couple of years after I left.

Those were the days!

95 wasnt much better i remember when they deployed it to a room of pcs at college they half heartedly locked it down such that control panel shortcut on a floppy worked etc. iirc i used the network to rename the sage accounts shortcut folder to sage and onion on the entire floor just to prove a point

[DaveP]

For comparison here is a Linux distribution timeline: Linux Timeline Included here for comparison [Windows and Windows vs Apple included in earlier posts to this thread]

Or how about a timleline showing greater detail showing relationships/comparing timelines for Unix, versions of Linux and Mac: Link

[andy_nic]

My first Windows OS was Windows ME couldn't go 3 hours without blue screening. but wasn't funny at the time.

Windows ME Spec
Minimum system specifications
Processor: Pentium 150MHz
Hard drive space: 320MB
RAM: 32MB