nemesis wrote:

I've always felt that windows 95 was more of an OS than all previous versions. But with Windows 98SE so readily available... what's really the point in installing 95 at this point? Maybe just to enjoy the nostalgia (I have a feeling that most people here understand that concept).

Perhaps one good reason would be it's lower hardware footprint (though this area lies kinda between a 386 and a DX2. Go above this and 98SE starts to become a viable option).

There is a nostalgia thing to it for many of us I reckon. I only used 95 on one of my rigs because 1)it was a 486 and 2)because I didn't even have 98SE at that time.

BUT I will skip 98se once the system gets into the 128MB range and beyond 😜.

I prefered Plus!'s 8-bit icons over Win98SE's. More colorful 😀

I really started off on Windows 95. I'd always crash and wreck windows 3! I was young. Back then I had almost no exposure to DOS. My school was crappy and only had Apple IIc's then and only for games like Oregon trail, number munchers, and for some reason or another my teachers would find a reason not to take us to the computer room!!

For games, I'm sure he means not the install itself but setup of memory management, TSR's drivers and the like which can still be daunting to most. I wonder if windows didn't get it's DirectX going as strong (or failed) how the gaming market would of turned out. Probably more support for OpenGL on Linux and other API's? It seems currently that DirectX is really killing us now it has slowed down and evolvement out of lack of competition!

One thing that struck me funny was Windows was for multi-tasking...except it never got decent till we got to win2k and XP. Back then you had to shutdown everything for gaming on windows!

Anyways, I won't touch anything less than 98SE! I love USB support and native DOS ability.

I had my reservations about Win95 back in the day, you know, switching from Workbench to DOS was already enough of a shock, but after seeing Microsoft Dangerous Creatures on a computer showroom, I was instantly sold 😎

sliderider wrote:

Windows NT would have been a bad choice for a gaming rig because they cut all the DirectX support out of it after about DirectX 3.

Sure, but computers don't end in gaming 😉.

The only reason to install Windows 95 like Tetrium said would be the lower resources required by the OS in comparison to Win98. Win98 is kind of resource sucker, especially on early Pentium machines and 32mb configurations 😁.

I've never really used Windows 95 extensively, why are the updated editions so criticized?

All I remember about Windows 95 are three things:

1. Those annoying "Start Me Up" commercials which made it impossible for me to remember the rest of the actual song. x_x;

2. Having to reboot into real DOS constantly to play games since the "Exit to DOS" feature would sometimes only actually boot into a shell.

3. BSOD

My stint with 95 lasted just for a year, then a virus killed the FAT so we took the opportunity to upgrade to 98, then eventually 98SE. My next OS was XP.

I've NEVER used Windows ME; I don't even know what the Windows ME startup sound sounds like... and I prefer to keep it that way. ;)

Don't forget those startup chimes that went for like half a minute

Gemini000 wrote:

I've NEVER used Windows ME; I don't even know what the Windows ME startup sound sounds like... and I prefer to keep it that way. 😉

WinME is still preferable over 95/98 under certain circumstances, but you aren't missing much.

Gemini000 wrote:

I've NEVER used Windows ME; I don't even know what the Windows ME startup sound sounds like... and I prefer to keep it that way. 😉

It sounds the same as the one in 2k I think.

And what Barry_Purplelips said is basically correct.
I preferred ME over 98SE as I had years of experience with tweaking and running ME before I even got my hands on a 98SE disk.
ME is a good alternative to 98SE if you're more into Windows games.

ME has quite some differences to 98SE and in the end, it's more a matter of personal preference which one you decide to choose.

However, personally I'd try every single OS at least once to get some 1st hand experience 😉

I also tried 98SE once and, for what I used it for, didn't prefer to use it over ME.

ME and 2k have the same GUI btw

Windows ME ain't bad actually. It's just that I don't see it as such an essential upgrade, compared to Windows 2000 or (much more) XP. So users of Win98 or 98SE had no reason to move to ME. And without a couple of tweaks it can prove to be a pain! However, if you tweak it properly it's better than 98SE for everything except DOS gaming. I've tried reactivating DOS Mode under ME, but it just never worked properly and made the whole system unstable!