Windows Nostalgia - Share it

[localzuk]

Ahh, Command and Conquer Red Alert on Windows 95 *arrrrghhhhh!!! (the sound of a soldier being hit by a flamethrower unit)*, Carmageddon and the original GTA.

 

Those were the days

[synaesthesia]

Ooooh carmageddon - bliss! Remember that on my first 3D card too

 

For windows though, I only really started using it at Windows 3.0 on the heady heights of 4 colour CGA. Magenta, cyan, black and white - bliss! Almost lifelike! Before that I was strictly DOS. Always really been a PC junkie so never played too much with the amiga kit (although plenty of people I knew, mostly friends of my dads had them and enjoyed showing off the various pinball games). Previous to that it was the joys of Atari ST's TOS (snigger).

 

NT4 got it's use as my main OS for a good couple of years, that was if my memory serves, about the time of DirectX 3 and C&C / Red Alert. I went from that straight over to 2000, missing out the 98's entirely. 2000 was slated something chronic at the time, in very much a similar vein as Vista, however like NT4 still has pride of place in god knows how many places to this day.

[kearton]

That Warp advert brought back old memories. I had it when I was at University.

 

Then I remembered some old jokes:

OS/2 - Half the Operating System

MACINTOSH - Most Applications Crash. If Not The Operating System Hangs

PCMCIA - People Can't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms

Edited July 17, 2009 by kearton

[tmcd35]

Got 25 mins to waste ?

 

Yes, I have!

 

Thanx for the link Matt. Very, very interesting. I've never use OS/2 but I must say that chronicals ep has me sold!

 

Loved the invite to talk to the program on line - Compuserve "GO CHRONICALS"

 

OS/2 was way, way ahead of it's time. In fact I can't think of those OO features being implemented as well in any current major OS. And the speech recognition, even today that level performance is a £80 add-on to either Windows or Mac OS and I think IBM are still the leaders in the field!

 

Finally, I loved the prediction near the end - "Users have problems double-clicking to launch programs. I find the idea of the Launch pad (single click - aka apple dock) very useful, and that is probably something Microsoft might come out with". Well 14 years later and Windows 7 is being launched with, yep you guessed it a new taskbar featuring Launchpad/dock style single click application launching - love it!

[originofsymmetry]

I must be one of the babies here then.

 

First got a glimpse of Windows 95 (I think) at my dads work when I was around 6. Played Galactics the whole time.

 

Then we got our own PC in the winter of 98 so had 98SE. I had grown to 8 and a half and can remember the screams of my dad when I shifted the taskbar to the left of the screen. In the proceding years I would then outdo my dads skills on the PC and the tables turned where he would (and stil does) ask me for help.

 

In 2004 I finally persuaded him to get XP, still on the same 98SE machine though. A 400Mhz Processor, 320MB SDRAM and a 15GB HDD was the power.

 

Then another PC was bought with XP and this was where my knowledge took off. I done so much to that poor machine between installing Server 2003 and a local domain for the house and slapping group policies on the parents.

 

Then came Vista, and boy did I love that thing, gorgeous interface and (at least for me) great performance, enojed using it alot and still will with my student license.

 

Been using WIndows 7 since it first became err avaialble to the public and love it. Very much as someone on here mentioned Vista Gti.

 

I am now 19.

 

Must say I have enjoyed my travels thorugh Microsft OS's and hope for a good few more down the road.

[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.

[6Foot2]

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;

 

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/DSC00375.jpg

 

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

 

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j29/mredman/Misc/DSC00376.jpg

 

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.

[6Foot2]

 

...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

[6Foot2]

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

Edited July 20, 2009 by 6Foot2
Original post contained large image: Adjusted post to only include links to webpages.

[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

[mac_shinobi]

Here's another link for you then:

 

Evolution Of Windows Compared To Mac

 

what happened to 10.3 and 10.4 ?

[mac_shinobi]

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

 

I got a samsung laptop at the time Me was just out and I nearly ended up with Me but luckily got windows 98 SE - phew !!

[6Foot2]

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

 

Graphical User Interface Timeline

 

Here is another site carrying, somewhat, similar information [but at times in more depth?]

 

Link: GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery

 

Major headings include: GUIs, Timelines, Screenshots, Icons and Sounds [among others]

[jenking]

Take a look what i've just dug out, does anybody remember using these? First time installed it, I was lucky enough to have it on CD!!

 

[Quackers]

Take a look what i've just dug out, does anybody remember using these? First time installed it, I was lucky enough to have it on CD!!

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29982[/ATTACH]

 

Yes i had Windows 95 on about 40 floppies as the laptop only had a floppy drive.