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Things that don't work: Yes, I'm talking about Windows 95


© Dan Finkelstein

Jul 15, 1997


I remember it like it was yesterday...When was it exactly? Some time in August, 1995? Yes, that was the fateful day I installed this new operating system called "Windows 95" on my computer, and it changed my computing life forever.

Mr. Gates, the president, CEO, and spiritual leader of this small company out in a small town called Redmond, Washington, called Microsoft, had some pretty lofty goals for this operating system. Huge goals. In fact, the single sentence I remember staring at as the nifty W95 installation program loaded megabytes of data onto my poor hardrive was, "Everything you do now will be more fun!"

Recently, I've been muttering those same words under my breath. Programs, especially computer games these days sometimes just don't work. Internet Explorer 4.0 screwes up my hard drive; Netscape 4.1 ("Final") crashes at least 300 times a day; the newest version of DriectX (what are they on now? Four? Five?) works fine with one game, but seemingly laughs at another.

Watching the recent Mars Pathfinder mission, looking over this JPL scientists shoulders as he maniplates a model in some X Windows program, all I could think of was "Thank God he isn't using Windows 95". I could see it now -- the scientist, on live TV, gets the dreaded "blue screen o' death", and has to re-boot his computer. Hahaha! I'd laugh for days!

Anyway, what's my point? Well, I dunno, it's 11 o'clock the day before this article is due, and I've just restarted Netscape for the 284th time today. Although, I must admit, as long as you don't install too many things in Windows (or you re-install the whole OS sometimes), and have a fairly fast computer with lots of RAM, Windows 95 will (probably) works fine. And it sure is better than Windows 3.1. And it's being improved (supposidly).

But, until then, there's nothing worse than accidentally hitting the "Windows 95 key" in the middle of a 16 person Quake-fest, with you leading by 3 frags, then having your system hang as Windows 95 decides what to do for 5 minutes, then present you with the message that "This program has performed an illegial operation and will be shut down"

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Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: View all related messages
4.   Aug 7, 2001 11:39 AM
Ahh... If there is any one thing I can count on from the computer game world its a good "My software can beat up your software" bout. Well, what say you, has DirectX actually improved from its beginni ...

-- posted by Wolvie27
3.   Jul 23, 1997 7:36 AM
It sounds like you have too much Beta crap on your system to run anything, especially Quake. While WinQuake is a neat little program, for true Quakers, DOS still provides the best playground.

I wo ...

-- posted by JoeG_3
2.   Jul 21, 1997 12:44 PM
Dan

Your article beg the question - why are you running Quake under Win 95????

I have some nice DOS modem tools I can loan you.


I also suggest you stick with Netscape Navigator ver 3.0 Is ...

-- posted by Robert
1.   Jul 16, 1997 6:37 PM
There is of course a trade-off here. Windows NT 4.0 (which I run)
is almost completely bullet-proof, i.e. the OS never crashes, but
individual programs can. The good thing here is, one program
cr ...

-- posted by JustinB_2



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