Reply to post: Win95

Win95

Still mostly 16bit, just all the 32bit extensions in WFWG3.11 rolled up. Real 32bit NT was two years old. Properly configured Win For Workgroups had poor "Program Manager", but had 32bit disk driver, same 32bit TCP/IP, Video For Windows/ Multimedia, Win32s to run NT programs.Win95 was less stable than properly installed WFWG 3.11 with all extras. Rubbish compared to NT3.5

Plus: The new desktop instead of Program Manager.

Minuses:

* Explorer File Mangler, single window and buggy.

* Autrorun added, even though already proven bad on Amiga

* Fake Win APIs added so mostly 16 bit Office 95 wouldn't run on Win3.x, even with Win32s, which meant that that NT 3.5 couldn't run Office 95, they had to release NT3.51

* No named pipe creation (just like Win3.x)

* Barely more than WFWG 3.11 with new shell.

* No process isolation

* No Security. The Log-in only affected what LOCAL Network resources you could connect to!

* Poisoned development of NT4.0, Win2K, XP and led to Vista.

* Led to Win ME, the Win98SE was best version.

* Only later OEM Version b had USB

* Encouraged bad practices on Program Application development.

* Direct X, nothing more than a Kludge to port DOS games with direct access to Graphics HW, leading to stupidity of Graphics and Printer Drivers in Kernel in NT4.0.

* Held back deployment of NT in business for about 7 years.

* As damaging to progress of Security & decent OS adoption as DOS was in 1980/1981.

Win95 should ONLY have been on a games console. Instead something intended only for home users was mis-sold to most small bushiness and many larger ones.

In reality to run Excel, Web Browser, Word and TCP/IP, without paging, you needed as much RAM as NT 3.5x anyway.

Oh, and a Shell only version of Explorer desktop / Explorer File manager as "Tech preview" worked fine on NT3.51. Instead they broke NT4.0 by kernel changes and Direct X (and it still couldn't run most Win9x games anyway, so they broke it without achieving anything for business users).

It's been downhill since 1995 for MS, accelerating in 2002/2004 with Vista development. Too late, Aero is officially a mistake. Vista = NT 6.0, Win9x on Ecstasy.

Win7 is really Win 6.x

Win 2000, XP and Win 2003 are NT 5.x

Win 8 and Win 10 are pointless.

MS already had a decent 32bit OS for over two years when they released Win95.

Heck, they even had their own versions of UNIX(Xenix in 1987?) and MS OS/2+LanManager (1989 after ending IBM deal).

All they needed was to put the new shell on NT3.5 and have a game console with Win95. Idiots.