Where were you??? Mmmm... Windows 95...

[biggman15]

Sorry this one didn't feel Right in The Betanews Thread....
http://www.betanews.com/article/10_Years_On_Windows_95_Remembered/1124901092
Where were you???? I don't remember... Because I didn't give a Damn about computers When Windows 95 was Released... But all that Changed with My First Computer that didn't have Dos/Windows 3.1... I never had a computer Before that... But every computer I messed with had either Dos or Windows 3.1.... Meh... Anyway... It was Early 1996 And My Mom Whacked out $2400 for a Nice New Complicated looking Pentium 100 with a 1Mb Trident Video Card, SoundBlaster 16, a 1.24 GB hardDrive, 16Mbs of Ram and a Cheap FaxModem(wasn't cheap at the time....)... She even took a Training course for it... Kinda Funny really... Before We ever turned it on My Mom tried to put a Floppy disk in the Drive, Backwards.... :cheeky: Although She did Manage to put the Cable for the Monitor on Upside Down... :cross-eye That was fun... Before we ever got the damn thing going we had to fix a Plug...

That little thing was Great... The first thing My Mom wanted was The Internet... Just to Chat with her Best friend at the time.... She would Spend hours Chatting... I would spend hours looking for Games... And My little Brother Just wanted to play the Games I Found... He didn't care for the Net... Still doesn't... I used that little Computer for Years... Let me think... Ah yes... Early 1996 - Late 2002... That thing was Dinosoar but I didn't care... It could play Starcraft And several others... It also Met windows 98 Around Mid 2002... Mostly because I was tired of fixing the Windows 95 install... When I gave that thing back to My Mom, I found out it even Had USB built in... Just didn't have a plug for it... that didn't take long to find...

Anyway... That little computer had alot of little problems that I didn't fix out of ignorance... I didn't know you could fix them... so I ignored them... Until I found a Simple Driver Upgrade had it running like new... Sortof... You should have seen My face When I discovered AntiVirus... OMFG!!!!! You mean this computer can go faster... Sure enough... I had never seen Starcraft run that smooth... Wow... That was alot of Viruses... :) I had only heard of Firewalls so I wasn't concerned at the time... Then another step - More Ram... Look at that it boots faster... Those were the Days... To think I was content with Internet Explorer... I had heard of Netscape.... But I didn't want to download it over Dialup... Shoot... I didn't move past IE until Firefox was at 1.0 Preview Release...

Lets take a Step Back... How about Digital Audio... I used that computer to play CD's.... but as far as I wa concerned the default cd player was ugly... I found Winamp... I didn't even Know it could play MP3's... I used that snazzy little thing as a CD player... There's another story... I'm glad I found QCD... Mmmm... Google is your friend.... But thats not what this is about...

I had heard about ripping CDs to My harddrive... but that little P100 couldn't take it... neither could that half broken 8x cdRom... So I ignored that...

Ah the Memories... One of Favorite memories is When I gave My old 400Mhz AMD k-6 2 to My mom and She let me Destroy that little P100... :) I kept the Processor.... It still sits on a Shelf in My room as a Memory of My stupidity... Among other things... Anyway I took that little thing apart 1 screw at a time... you would not beleive how Many screws they used to put into those things... You also wouldn't believe how much a Steel case weighs...

I won't forget you.. Oh Crappy computer that I want nothing to do with ever again...





I think that's the most typing I ever done on this forum....

Edit: There's alot of Dots... How many of you read the whole thing??? /Edit

[Rex_Mundi_Incarnit]

It didn't take me long to figure windows 95 sucked big time. So as soon as windows 98 came out we put that on our Pentium 66MHz which is long gone now. I dont remember much else about it though. We also had a 386/33MHz machine with windows 3.11, but it died after about 10 years due to a depleted cmos battery and that was about 5 years ago. Anyway, nice story Biggman. :)

[thetribe]

First computer I got was on a payment scheme, one of those pay for 3 years and it's yours but if you wanted to upgrade in those 3 years you could and they'd just add the difference to the end of the payments. Quickly realised after going from a 486dx 25mhz with 4mb RAM and 80mb HDD all hte way up to a 486dx2 66mhz with a whopping 8mb RAM and a 120mb HDD that those were bad deals so I handed the PC back, signed off on it and splashed right out on a PC of my own.
P133 32mb RAM, 4x CD drive, 400mb HDD (wow, didn't know how I was going to fill that one) 2mb onboard graphics and SB16 sound card, cost me £2,000, most I've ever spent on a PC. I was in heaven, it flew through stuff :D I still have it, in fact it sits next to me standing on it's side out of hte way. Doesn't do anything at the moment but is complete and will be set up with Win98 if I eventually get round to extending this room and have space to add it to the collection, will only be to run one bit of software and probably only a couple of hours a day but it still has it's uses :)

[Willow of Oz]

Dos 5 for me, on a 486-25sx. Win 3.1 as well.
For a time there I lived for emm386.
I could reminisce much more but I'm on dvorak layout still : slow typing.

[Todd The Kiwi]

windows '95 you say?
man i was 15, computers sucked and were for nerds.
they still are :P

[Sheepeh]

My families first computer was a Pentium 100mhz, and 8mb of RAM running Windows 95. I loved computers even before then, and I popped in quite a few upgrades to that machine - a 166 "Overdrive" chip, another 8MB RAM, and a new 800MB hard drive. 800MB!! It's now "Interceptor", and runs Linux as a hardware firewall downstairs. This must have been around 94/95 I guess, I wasn't all that old.


The next PC was bought by my family was a 500Mhz Celeron HP thingy; my god that was pap. Couldn't play games for crap because of that Celery. I didn't have much to do with that, apart from buying it a new graphics card. It's now "Ghost" and is used as a internet terminal in my sisters room.

After that I built my own 1Ghz MONSTER of a machine (I overclocked her to 1.33Ghz, which on an AMD computer is a major overclock; she lasted for about a year and half as my main machine). It's now "Pegasus" and serves as my mail and web server, as well as stashing files I want to keep when backing up.

Then my 2800+ Athlon XP which I used until recently which I sold to my mum so I could upgrade mine and she could have one that "just works, and works fast". It's running as "NewDawn" - it's her first computer since that crappy 500mhz jobby, quite a jump!

And now my new build, only a few months old - my 3700+ AMD64 San Diego. Called Trevor. Obviously.

I've used pretty much every operating system released since 95 on them, but they are now standardised to XP on all machines that can run it, and Mandriva for the ones that can't.

I just wish my Amiga had had succesors worthy of the Amiga name; I'd rather be using the much rumoured Amiga PowerPC (AmigaONE) than a PC.

[madjo]

our first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 (a bit less than a C64 :) but my dad was a cheap-skate) :)
later we got a spectrum ZX, and a Phillips MSX2.

Our first real PC was a 8086 (second hand POS) :) with DOS 4 or DOS 5 on a floppy (not sure anymore)... :)

[Antman]

I have been an DP / MIS / IT professional for 20+ years. I acquired my first privately owned PC in 2004. Primary use = QMP for audio, JetAudio for video. The microcomputer (PC) is just a tool. Please note - like Ben Franklin, I am fundamentally lazy and all of my professional behavior is tailored to facilitate/hide/benefit from this fact.

I was a journalism student when I first saw a PC in 1981, and I instantly understood why PCs would forever be integral to my professional endeavours - reduced time on task. I laid eyes on a word processor - no more exacto knife and glue to cut and paste. :bulb:

1988, working for a small long distance company - reduced departmental time on task from 5 days to 2 hours; quadrupled billable LD usage. This was a dumb terminal on a midi (not MIDI). The beauty of user-definable fields and branch logic data flow - I like it, I love it...

Best machine I ever operated (in terms of tool application)? 1995, a 486/66 with 16 meg RAM, using 12 meg for a RAM drive, Windows 3.11. I was able to construct a process that reduced a four hour set of tasks to three button pushes in 15 minutes. Use of Norton's command line interpreter NDOS was required to do it.

The next time I wrote a similar program, I was using Access 97 on a 400 MHz CPU with 128 meg RAM. That program initially ran in 24 hours. I got it down to an hour with better code, and then learned ELEGANT code, and the app ran in five minutes.

First time I used Win95 - I created a folder on my desktop called Shortcuts and placed all my links ther :grin: :knocked-o

To this day, I can hardly believe that my time is billable. Today, I am writing a mail merge database for a company that would rather pay me $900 than pay $50 retail. Time on task? Four hours. Go figure.

[Oleg]

First computer I had was 486 running Windows 3.1 :-)

[Antman]

I acquired my first privately owned PC in 2004...
...Go figure...

Spring 2006 - my second PC. It smokes! And I will replace it in six months. Water-cooled Conroe.

Go figure.

[acushla]

Spring 2006 - my second PC. It smokes!

I don't really know...but I don't think they are suppossed to smoke. I'd have that checked out.:puzzled:

[acushla]

To this day, I can hardly believe that my time is billable. Today, I am writing a mail merge database for a company that would rather pay me $900 than pay $50 retail. Time on task? Four hours. Go figure.What was the name of that company again?:ponder: