vetz wrote on 2023-10-25, 05:50:

If you go and read old magazines, no-one cared about compatibility on older titles. It was all about the best Windows and video acceleration/quality and performance on current titles. That is why the Matrox'es were seen as the better more high-end product.

So it depends who you're making these lists for. Contemporary as in ultimate in 1996, or in hindsight for retro users.

It's a bit of both. If I was just to do lists based solely on those specific years, I'd just copy CGW's annual systems. But I think hindsight is important.

I also do tend to bias towards compatibility, since to me a system that can run some games properly isn't as ideal.

Certainly different people will have different priorities between compatibility, performance or image quality. That's no real one single good answer.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:31:

That's a good point. I looked up to see if DVD-ROMs were available in 1997 and it turns out they were. So I'll modify the list accordingly.

You may want to think about an MPEG2 decoder card. Not sure when it was that CPUs/GPUs acquired enough power to decode MPEG2 DVDs, but I think if you wanted to watch movies in 1997, you needed an MPEG2 decoder card. By 2000 or so, you didn't.

And a DVD-ROM drive for... data... was useless. Most software remained on CD until, oh, the mid-2000s. I should check my drawer of old games; I certainly have vague recollection of one game (original Far Cry?) being 5 CDs. But until the mid-2000s, you just couldn't expect people to have DVD drives.

We've lived in a world where DVD-RW drives have been $20-25ish for well over a decade now (I just searched my email, I have an order confirmation for a $23CAD DVD-RW in 2008. Two years earlier, I had paid $45CAD for one.), so it's hard to imagine that there was an era where going from, say, a CD-ROM to a DVD-ROM cost real money. This was also an era where many systems would have had a CD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive; you may ask... why would anyone want that, seems redundant? And I think it was either i) CD-ROM drives could read CDs at faster speeds than CD-RW drives, and/or ii) CD-RW drives were so expensive that people were worried about wearing them out by using them as your only ODD. Even the big OEMs, like the HPs and eMachines and Compaqs, would have shipped that combination of two drives.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-24, 22:08:

Well, you're missing NT 3.5, NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000 as well.

I was focusing on consumer operating systems. I skipped Windows Me as well, since nobody really used it (at least not that I knew of).

Especially from a gaming perspective, where as games required newer OSs, you didn't much of a choice but to upgrade.

That's why I find it a bit astounding now at how much slower the pace has been. And when people complain about being forced to upgrade (such as with Steam dropping Win 7/8 support), I think some perspective is warranted. Being able to run and game on the same OS for over a decade is a luxury we didn't use to have.

People were very, very eager to embrace new operating systems until, well, Vista, because, for most people, every operating system they had used prior to XP was garbage. (Win2000 fans, obviously, would disagree, but not that many people used 2000). So the bar was really "is Win98 RTM on release day any worse than Win95?" and the answer was usually no.

I'd throw Me into the 'garbage' mix, although I guess not people even used it to begin with.

I do remember for a time treating consumer Windows operating systems like Star Trek movies: every other one was good.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:40:

You may want to think about an MPEG2 decoder card. Not sure when it was that CPUs/GPUs acquired enough power to decode MPEG2 DVDs, but I think if you wanted to watch movies in 1997, you needed an MPEG2 decoder card. By 2000 or so, you didn't

I'll consider that.

I'm debating how much I want to get in adding non-gaming accessories. Trying to keep the list manageable for the mean time.

And a DVD-ROM drive for... data... was useless. Most software remained on CD until, oh, the mid-2000s. I should check my drawer of old games; I certainly have vague recollection of one game (original Far Cry?) being 5 CDs. But until the mid-2000s, you just couldn't expect people to have DVD drives.

There were some early DVD-ROM releases. Wing Commander 4 apparently had a DVD-ROM release in 1997 with higher quality cinematics. And Texas Murphy: Overseer included a DVD-ROM in addition to CDs.

So I agree that it wasn't completely expected to have DVD drives as early as 1997, but it was an option.

Update #2 to the list.

Made some minor tweaks to recommended CD/DVD drives. Boosted 1995 to 8x given the availability of 8x drives in late 1995, and added CD-RW and DVD-ROM options to 1997 given their availability.

Also added specs for 1992 and 1993. I am finding those years more challenging to research given the lack of hardware coverage from a gaming perspective at the time. The earliest gaming rigs don't show up until mid 1993 with Falcon Northwest's rigs (CGW July 1993).

For 1992 I opted for a 486 DX-33. While the DX2-66 technically released that year, this was the era of speed sensitive gaming and a DX-33 would have been more broadly compatible at the time.

For 1993, I opted for a 486 DX2-66. Pentium based systems started appearing in 1993, but again, speed sensitivity would have been a factor with some games of the era. In Falcon's case, they listed the 486 DX2-66 as their top end system until the end of 1993. It wasn't until 1994 when they would start advertising Pentium options for their systems.

Video cards and motherboard chipsets were also a challenge given both the variety of options and lack of general performant testing from a gaming POV at the time. In researching contemporary retro 486 builds a lot of people tend to use hardware from 1994 onward. Not so much period correct hardware from 1992 or 1993, making it a bit challenging to get a sense of what would have been ideal.

If anyone has any specifics to suggest for those categories, I'm all ears.

Finally, added some notes to the bottom of some of the listing explaining some of the selection choices.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:44:

I was focusing on consumer operating systems. I skipped Windows Me as well, since nobody really used it (at least not that I knew of).

Especially from a gaming perspective, where as games required newer OSs, you didn't much of a choice but to upgrade.

That's why I find it a bit astounding now at how much slower the pace has been. And when people complain about being forced to upgrade (such as with Steam dropping Win 7/8 support), I think some perspective is warranted. Being able to run and game on the same OS for over a decade is a luxury we didn't use to have.

What I would say about Windows Me is this - plenty of people used it. My mom had a laptop with it. Your typical university student who, today, would have a Mac, back then would have had a Dell or Toshiba with Windows Me. Etc. For about a year and a bit before the release of XP, most consumer machines would have come with Me, and... many of these never got upgraded to XP, especially since product activation meant that, for the first time, you couldn't easily just... "bend"... the rules... and upgrade your mom or sister with a disc you already bought for yourself.

But that's mainstream consumers. Businesses went from 98SE to 2000 - by the time 2000 came out, businesses could afford computers capable of running NT, which was... not at all the case in the days of NT4/95/98. 95/98 were widely, widely used in business because people just couldn't afford NT-capable machines for ordinary productivity tasks. And I think some business features were removed from Me, just in case some businesses didn't get the hint and open their wallets for 2000.

I think non-super-serious-gamer enthusiasts were largely on the 2000 front by the time Me came out. One thing that I think is under, underappreciated is just how unstable 98SE was on the machines from ~2000 with enough RAM for multitasking and always-on broadband Internet connections. I could take my Dell PIII I foolishly ordered with 98SE in summer 2000 and, 20-30 minutes after rebooting, destroy it by running out of system resources. The same machine, with a little extra RAM, could do the same workloads on 2000 and not be rebooted for months.

Did 2000 have compatibility issues? Yes. Did some games get left behind? Yes. But for people who were not super-serious gamers (and that would certainly include me), the benefits of 2000's stability were worth it, even if it meant abandoning a 6-12 month old game you liked or a 1-2 year old scanner whose manufacturer didn't want to support 2000.

The pace has changed because, fundamentally, Windows 2000 was the last upgrade of Windows that gave you a dramatic 'OMG this is amazing! I can do so much more than yesterday' feeling. XP was fine, but despite all the XP love today, XP pre-SP1 was less stable and a lot more resource-hungry than 2000, so while 98SE/Me users embraced XP as their first breath of NT, 2000 fans were... not that excited about it.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:44:

People were very, very eager to embrace new operating systems until, well, Vista, because, for most people, every operating system they had used prior to XP was garbage. (Win2000 fans, obviously, would disagree, but not that many people used 2000). So the bar was really "is Win98 RTM on release day any worse than Win95?" and the answer was usually no.

I'd throw Me into the 'garbage' mix, although I guess not people even used it to begin with.

See above. By the time Me came out, most people who cared about these things had abandoned the sinking 9x ship.

I don't think Me was any worse than 98SE; it was lacking some DOS compatibility features and some businessy features, was a little prettier, etc. But... I think you have to look at the hardware. And how the hardware had evolved so much between 1995 and 2000 that the hardware in 2000 was way too good for the 9x family's compromised architecture.

In 1995, I was running Win95 (bought it on release day) on a non-Intel 486DX2/50 with 8 megs of RAM. Ran great, even better after I upgraded to 20 megs of RAM. In 2000, I had 98SE on a PIII 700 with 128 megs of RAM, which was a huge mistake. In 2001, my mom and university friends had this low-end Toshiba laptop model with Me... 128 megs of RAM, I am trying to remember what the processor was, maybe a Celeron 800? That was way, way, way too much hardware for a 9x-family OS.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:44:

I do remember for a time treating consumer Windows operating systems like Star Trek movies: every other one was good.

"Every other one was good" is... a rule that was invented after the Windows 8 idiocy and trying to lump in Windows 8 with the poorly-regarded Vista.

And frankly, I still, to this day, will defend Vista. If you had good hardware with the proper GPU support for Aero Glass, an acceptable quantity of RAM, etc, Vista was a perfectly competent operating system. I actually would go even further and say that I think pre-SP1 Vista was better than pre-SP1 XP. (Pre-SP1 XP had a dreadful taskbar-freezing bug among other issues).

But the world i) had bad hardware (especially thanks to Intel and their bad onboard graphics), and ii) was comparing RTM Vista with post-SP2 XP, which was the most mature OS that the Windows/PC world had ever seen. And so Vista flopped.

For the record, as a Windows enthusiast since 1995 (and someone who has run every Windows version, if not at release date or through the public betas/insider program, then in the first few months after its release, on some machines or other since 1995), I have only considered two versions bad, and interestingly, for the same reason:
1) Windows 8 - what do you mean, you're trying to turn my high-end desktop with a 1920x1200 monitor into a tablet with your crazy full-screen interface?
2) Windows 11 - what do you mean, my then-4 year old i7 7700 with NVMe SSDs, 64GB of RAM, doesn't meet your "performance and reliability expectations" and isn't worthy of officially-supported Windows 11 when a one-year newer Celeron Jxxxx with 4 gigs of RAM and eMMC storage is fine?
And the reason is the same in both cases: Microsoft broke an implied promise that if you had good-quality high-end hardware, you'd have a good experience with the next versions of Windows.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 22:02:

For 1992 I opted for a 486 DX-33. While the DX2-66 technically released that year, this was the era of speed sensitive gaming and a DX-33 would have been more broadly compatible at the time.

For 1993, I opted for a 486 DX2-66. Pentium based systems started appearing in 1993, but again, speed sensitivity would have been a factor with some games of the era. In Falcon's case, they listed the 486 DX2-66 as their top end system until the end of 1993. It wasn't until 1994 when they would start advertising Pentium options for their systems.

Video cards and motherboard chipsets were also a challenge given both the variety of options and lack of general performant testing from a gaming POV at the time. In researching contemporary retro 486 builds a lot of people tend to use hardware from 1994 onward. Not so much period correct hardware from 1992 or 1993, making it a bit challenging to get a sense of what would have been ideal.

I am curious to see what others would suggest, because I would point out three things:
1) Most computers in those days were purchased for non-gaming use. I can't imagine a 12-year-old whose parents can afford a 486 DX2/66 saying "oh, you know what mom, I'm sorry, I just read in a magazine that game X is speed sensitive, so let's just buy the 486 DX/33 instead."
2) This was an era when non-brand-name machines had turbo buttons. So that may address the speed sensitivity issue another way.
3) If you had a speed sensitive game you really liked on your 1990 computer and by the time you got your 1994-era computer, it didn't run right on it, you'd probably... just continue playing it on the 1990 computer in a different room. I would think most families would have kept the older computer, especially because it reduced family conflict: if the kid can play the speed-sensitive game on the old computer while dad is doing productivity stuff on the new computer, that avoids a family fight over the new computer. Keep in mind that 99% of families would have only been able to afford one "good" computer throughout this period and until the early 2000s.

But more importantly, this was an era without the Internet, forums, etc. Even if you really liked game X and game X didn't like hardware Y, the likelihood of you knowing that when you're considering buying hardware Y was very low. So you'd buy hardware Y, try to run all the software on it you cared about, and if game X didn't work, well, you might pick up your phone and call their tech support, but otherwise, you moved on with life and either never played game X again or played it on your old computer.

(And actually, you wonder why there is so much nostalgia about this stuff 30 years later - one of the reasons is that people were forced to move on from some of those games simply because, well, the hardware you have couldn't run it anymore. To give you another personal example, around 1999, I really liked playing the original Carmageddon. The original one was a DOS-only game that really should run in full-fledged MS-DOS Mode in 9x. When I dumped 98SE for Win2000 in late 2000, couldn't run Carmageddon anymore. Didn't really spend any time trying to figure out if there was a way to run it under 2000. So... that was basically the end of me and Carmageddon until close to two decades later when i) they ported the original one to iOS, and ii) they modernized it with their 'Max Damage' remake.)

Generally speaking, I would go further and say as follows: that was an era where you bought the best computer you could afford without that much regard to compatibility. And this is also why, 20+ years later, some things that were unvalued back in the day (FX5xxx video cards, anyone? VIA vs NForce chipsets? Voodoo 3/5 cards?) are now prized because they turn out to have better compatibility with older stuff.

Most people did not have the "Internet" (I guess "ultimate" users would) but more people did have access to dial-in to BBS and we did do crazy things like talk to people in real-life so we would know you had what system and try games on it to determine compatibility
I remember finding out that Doom wouldn't run on my 286 by playing it on a 486 at a store and we'd talk about and try games out at on school computers and on friends home computers.

Also dual-booting was and is a thing for a reason. Dual-boot of 98 and NT4 or 98 and 2000, etc. An "Ultimate" machine would do this especially since the gaming machine wouldn't just be a gaming machine and browsing the Internet on 9x was shit compared to NT even with the unofficial tweaks and of course far more secure. Work and game on the good OS, game on the shit os. 😉

Speaking of Internets....no modem/NIC?

DosFreak wrote on 2023-10-26, 23:23:

Most people did not havethe Internet (I guess "ultimate" users would) but more people did have access to BBS and we did do things like talk to people in real-life so we would know you had what system and try games on it to determine compatibility

Unless you were connected to a university in some way, I don't think you would have had Internet access before 1994 or so, even if you were the absolute keenest technologist out there.

First version of Netscape came out Dec. 1994. Windows didn't have built-in support for dial-up TCP/IP until Windows 95 (anybody remember Trumpet Winsock?). Most of the oldest dial-up ISPs opened up shop around 1994-1995. By 1997 at the latest, you couldn't be a serious techie without Internet access; mainstream people would probably resist a few more years.

That being said, there's one thing I completely forgot because I didn't have a modem at the time, but you would have had access to relatively mainstream 'online services' like CompuServe or AOL in that time period, certainly if you had the budget for an ultimate system. $2.xx/hour or more, IIRC - this was long before AOL's move to flat-rate pricing.

Something widely forgotten about now - Windows 95 included Microsoft's MSN online service, which IIRC for the first few months of its life, had... rather poor or no Internet connectivity. This was a year after Apple's eWorld. Internet Explorer 1.0 was part of MS Plus!, not the base OS. Etc.

I'm not sure exactly when the bottom fell out of those proprietary online services - 1996 or 1997 maybe? And AOL survived by turning itself increasingly into an ISP? But I think the rapid mainstreamization of the Internet took a lot of people by surprise.

So yes, to the OP, add a quality modem at the maximum available speed for each year - 14.4, 28.8, 33.6, then the X2/K56Flex/V90/V92 era. Actually I would forget about V92 - by that point, 'ultimate' users would have been long away from dial-up. I would probably add a 10BaseT Ethernet card starting in/around 1996 - I think in most places, that's when telcos/cable cos started doing high-speed Internet trials, with widespread commercial launches closer to 1998-1999. Upgrade that to 100BaseT in 1998-1999. And really, high-speed Internet is what brought Ethernet into the home.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 22:02:

Update #2 to the list.

Made some minor tweaks to recommended CD/DVD drives. Boosted 1995 to 8x given the availability of 8x drives in late 1995, and added CD-RW and DVD-ROM options to 1997 given their availability.

I just noticed that you don't list speakers with any of those builds. IMO, those were an important part of a multimedia/gaming PC back in the day.

A pair of high quality Roland or Yamaha stereo speakers would have been fitting for the DOS era. On the other hand, a 4.1 (and later 5.1) Cambridge SoundWorks setup would enhance the later Win9x builds, especially those with DVD capabilities.

For example, a 1998 SBLive card could give you proper 4.1 surround sound in some prominent games released that year like Unreal, Half-Life and Thief: The Dark Project. With the proper setup, this could be done using a fully digital connection to minimize noise. And by the year 2000, you could get 5.1 surround in games like NFS: High Stakes, Deus Ex and Thief 2. I think the first SBLive model which officially supported 5.1 surround (SB0060) came out in 2000.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:44:

I was focusing on consumer operating systems. I skipped Windows Me as well, since nobody really used it (at least not that I kne […]
Show full quote

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-24, 22:08:

Well, you're missing NT 3.5, NT 3.51, NT 4, and Windows 2000 as well.

I was focusing on consumer operating systems. I skipped Windows Me as well, since nobody really used it (at least not that I knew of).

Especially from a gaming perspective, where as games required newer OSs, you didn't much of a choice but to upgrade.

That's why I find it a bit astounding now at how much slower the pace has been. And when people complain about being forced to upgrade (such as with Steam dropping Win 7/8 support), I think some perspective is warranted. Being able to run and game on the same OS for over a decade is a luxury we didn't use to have.

People were very, very eager to embrace new operating systems until, well, Vista, because, for most people, every operating system they had used prior to XP was garbage. (Win2000 fans, obviously, would disagree, but not that many people used 2000). So the bar was really "is Win98 RTM on release day any worse than Win95?" and the answer was usually no.

I'd throw Me into the 'garbage' mix, although I guess not people even used it to begin with.

I do remember for a time treating consumer Windows operating systems like Star Trek movies: every other one was good.

I dont understand why people think that about ME.
It was used, it was sold but not as much as 98SE and XP Home was because it sat in a curious position between them.
At the time Windows 98SE was being sold and it was getting cheaper and cheaper then ME was release in 2000, by late 2000 you could buy the retail version but most of the PCs on the shelves were 98 because it was cheaper than the new OS was. But you could buy it. and then just a year later Windows XP was released and the look of that people fell in love with over night, it just carried the vibe of the time and people wanted it.
Considering Windows ME was only really on sale for a year and it had much cheaper and well known competition in Windows 98SE then its a wonder it sold at all, not because it wasnt any good but because people prefer to spend as little as possible.
The real problem with ME wasnt anything to do with ME it was that 98 was popular and cheap. And even once Windows XP was released people were still spending money on Windows 98 budget PCs not ME because ME then had a reputation that it wasnt popular.

I was one of those people who skipped right past ME, not because it wasnt any good but because my background being what it was I used Windows 2000 and then when onto XP Pro VLK (Having got Win2k on Select from work the XP VLK was there so I used it) My PC required either Windows NT4, Windows 2000 or Windows XP because it was a dual PIII system so ME wasnt an option, and the single CPU systems I did have run either 95 or 98 because ME was expensive because it wasnt around long enough to become cheap. And who wants to spend money on an operating system anyway when you should be buying tapes, CDs and records...

All of MEs problems seem to have been lost in the passing of the batton between generations, the old gen who was there never bothered to explain it all and so the next gen who talk about it all just have to assume.

In the UK we had a few OEMs but the biggest high street retails were Time and Tiny and Tiny I remember most because it was from them my parents bought their PC and I remember there was about a dozen PCs on offer from them, and all but 2 or 3 of them had Windows 98 on them, while ME was on the more expensive systems, so they didnt sell a lot. Then ME was surplanted a year later and they got replaced with XP. They didnt get relegated because MS pulled the OS from sale because it was a millennium special (which a lot of companies did at the time to celebrate the year 2000).

Youre not building a y2k PC but if you were then the top PC of that year should be WinME or Windows 2000...
And the other big problem for ME starts here and that is Windows 2000.

VivienM wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:40:

You may want to think about an MPEG2 decoder card. Not sure when it was that CPUs/GPUs acquired enough power to decode MPEG2 DVD […]
Show full quote

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-26, 21:31:

That's a good point. I looked up to see if DVD-ROMs were available in 1997 and it turns out they were. So I'll modify the list accordingly.

You may want to think about an MPEG2 decoder card. Not sure when it was that CPUs/GPUs acquired enough power to decode MPEG2 DVDs, but I think if you wanted to watch movies in 1997, you needed an MPEG2 decoder card. By 2000 or so, you didn't.

And a DVD-ROM drive for... data... was useless. Most software remained on CD until, oh, the mid-2000s. I should check my drawer of old games; I certainly have vague recollection of one game (original Far Cry?) being 5 CDs. But until the mid-2000s, you just couldn't expect people to have DVD drives.

We've lived in a world where DVD-RW drives have been $20-25ish for well over a decade now (I just searched my email, I have an order confirmation for a $23CAD DVD-RW in 2008. Two years earlier, I had paid $45CAD for one.), so it's hard to imagine that there was an era where going from, say, a CD-ROM to a DVD-ROM cost real money. This was also an era where many systems would have had a CD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive; you may ask... why would anyone want that, seems redundant? And I think it was either i) CD-ROM drives could read CDs at faster speeds than CD-RW drives, and/or ii) CD-RW drives were so expensive that people were worried about wearing them out by using them as your only ODD. Even the big OEMs, like the HPs and eMachines and Compaqs, would have shipped that combination of two drives.

DVD wasnt a thing for games but it was a thing for movies.
Most of the set top DVD players at the time were expensive and many believe it or not stuttered during playback the cheap ones did anyway. You only have to look back at the reviews of the time to see that.
The lobby scene in The Matrix was a popular test for a DVD player to see how good it was.
That lead quite a few people to play DVD movies from their PC using the S Video connector on their video card. S Video gave you quite a nice picture believe it or not. Not great by todays standards but better than a VHS tape was especially after it had been played to death because it was rented from Blockbusters.

If my parents did it, then a lot of people must also have done it.
This is what lead on to the quick boot systems a few years later, that otherwise make no sense at all.

Most people now wouldnt believe what we had been through to get to where we are today.

Here also steps in the FX series of cards from nvidia, that otherwise make no sense in the history of video cards when you look back.

DosFreak wrote on 2023-10-26, 23:23:

Most people did not have the "Internet" (I guess "ultimate" users would) but more people did have access to dial-in to BBS and […]
Show full quote

Most people did not have the "Internet" (I guess "ultimate" users would) but more people did have access to dial-in to BBS and we did do crazy things like talk to people in real-life so we would know you had what system and try games on it to determine compatibility
I remember finding out that Doom wouldn't run on my 286 by playing it on a 486 at a store and we'd talk about and try games out at on school computers and on friends home computers.

Also dual-booting was and is a thing for a reason. Dual-boot of 98 and NT4 or 98 and 2000, etc. An "Ultimate" machine would do this especially since the gaming machine wouldn't just be a gaming machine and browsing the Internet on 9x was shit compared to NT even with the unofficial tweaks and of course far more secure. Work and game on the good OS, game on the shit os. 😉

Speaking of Internets....no modem/NIC?

I would have to agree very much there.
Dual booting was very much a thing. Work and pleasure was a requirement. Dad needed NT4 or Win2k and Tommy needed Win98 to game.

It was such a big thing companies actually made hard drive caddies to facilitate swapping hard drives to make it easier.

People these days think its a one stop shop but back then you did change OS depending on what you wanted especially with 95/NT4 because NT4 and games.... PLEeease!

We had the internet very early, but admittedly our adoption was ahead of the curve. We had it on windows 3.1, probably circa 94, but we even had aol briefly before moving to a real dial up isp, so that shows how early aol was running. Certainly it was not the norm to have internet that early though, we got lucky (a dialup isp opened near us).

Windows ME and 2000 existed and some people had them (and there’s nothing wrong with them), but they were never as popular as 98 or XP. Most people went from 98 to XP. I actually remember the day XP was released.

In terms of speed issues with the dx-66, don’t forget that pcs of that era had a turbo button for that exact reason. Anything that ran too fast you just hit the turbo button to slow it down. I remember when someone in the office my dad worked for offered to upgrade his processor for him and we went from a 486sx to a 486dx2-66, huge difference, was amazing at the time. Anyone who could have upgraded during that era probably would have, but there’s nothing wrong with the list as it is. Just wanted to comment about the era itself.

midicollector wrote on 2023-10-27, 05:43:

We had the internet very early, but admittedly our adoption was ahead of the curve. We had it on windows 3.1, probably circa 94, but we even had aol briefly before moving to a real dial up isp, so that shows how early aol was running. Certainly it was not the norm to have internet that early though, we got lucky (a dialup isp opened near us).

Windows ME and 2000 existed and some people had them (and there’s nothing wrong with them), but they were never as popular as 98 or XP. Most people went from 98 to XP. I actually remember the day XP was released.

In terms of speed issues with the dx-66, don’t forget that pcs of that era had a turbo button for that exact reason. Anything that ran too fast you just hit the turbo button to slow it down. I remember when someone in the office my dad worked for offered to upgrade his processor for him and we went from a 486sx to a 486dx2-66, huge difference, was amazing at the time. Anyone who could have upgraded during that era probably would have, but there’s nothing wrong with the list as it is. Just wanted to comment about the era itself.

I remember using the internet in '93 - '94 but it wasnt what you would think of as "on the internet".
It was dialing up to download a list of topics then downloading the topic page and ending the call to read it all while offline.
Then when I wanted to post my own message it would be as simple as dialling up sending the message and then hanging up.
It wasnt for a good few years that pages I was interested in started to appear online and then I would dial up get the page and disconnect to read it.
Internet cafes were very much the thing in the mid to late 90s... I would often go in for a coffee and a browse on the internet because it was so much cheaper and enjoyable than doing it at home.
The calls were 10p a minute so quite expensive to sit online for an hour or two.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-27, 03:31:

Considering Windows ME was only really on sale for a year and it had much cheaper and well known competition in Windows 98SE then its a wonder it sold at all, not because it wasnt any good but because people prefer to spend as little as possible.
The real problem with ME wasnt anything to do with ME it was that 98 was popular and cheap. And even once Windows XP was released people were still spending money on Windows 98 budget PCs not ME because ME then had a reputation that it wasnt popular.

No. When WinME went on sale, it was also discounted. I can't remember if it was a mail in rebate, because those were popular, or a buy it part of a purchase. But I think the upgrade version was less than 98 around $70, and $30-40 off (half off). So I think it was about $40. That was the cheapest Microsoft had done in a long time, and that lasted a few months. The reason real reasons why it was not popular were:
1) Microsoft internally trashed it, because the employees did not want another "DOS-based" OS. The employees wanted NT. Except WinXP was not ready and they were on the hook for a consumer based OS release in 2000. So the "it's buggy!" got spread in the press (even though it is essentially Win98 Third Edition). They knew this so it was discounted to recoup going to store with the boxed release as much as possible. Also, this is why DOS boot was removed ... because some brilliant marketing guy decided that if you can't boot to DOS, then at least they can't say it's unstable -- it got more stable!
2) When XP was released, even the OEMs just didn't have time to roll out many new computer products, so very few bought a computer with WinME. This is why people think -- no one used it. It was true. Pretty much every other Microsoft release had years before it was discontinued at retail. The other thing was many computers were offered with "free upgrade to ME" because while it was going to be offered, the media was not ready when the computer hit stores. But people did not do it because, apathy, 98 still worked on the machine, and going back to point #1, WinME was trashed. This again limited the presence when it was around.

When WinXP was ready (arguably buggy still -- MS was correct to push it out, I thought it was buggier on launch), then it was all over. Not only that, it got rid of the two OS tracks based on different kernels, one they really wanted, and one they had been trying to get rid of since the NT project started. Win9x was always a shell on top of the DOS kernel, but NT was just not ready until Win2000, but that was not consumer oriented.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-10-27, 14:41:

2) When XP was released, even the OEMs just didn't have time to roll out many new computer products, so very few bought a computer with WinME. This is why people think -- no one used it. It was true. Pretty much every other Microsoft release had years before it was discontinued at retail. The other thing was many computers were offered with "free upgrade to ME" because while it was going to be offered, the media was not ready when the computer hit stores. But people did not do it because, apathy, 98 still worked on the machine, and going back to point #1, WinME was trashed. This again limited the presence when it was around.

Looking at the timeline for Me, I would note two things:
1) Me shipped too late for back to school 2000, so really, it only had one back to school season (XP came out after back to school 2001).
2) Me was very explicitly marketed at consumers only; businesses were supposed to go to Win2000, or if they couldn't afford that, stick to 98SE.

Also, I would add a final thing - one big area of improvement in Me, I think, involved interaction with digital cameras, improved USB support, etc. Things that the consumer world badly needed to address peripherals that were rapidly growing in popularity and that Microsoft would want to provide a standard interface for. And... I wonder how this aligns with the rebirth of the iMac and the Apple marketing around positioning the iMac as a digital hub.

Something, and I am not necessarily 100% sure what it was, appeared to discourage people from upgrading from 98SE to Me. Maybe it was the fact that Me came out less than 18 months after 98SE. Maybe it was price. Maybe it was, as you said, that weird negative vibe in the press about Me. But... for example, I got a new 98SE system in late June 2000 that I upgraded to Win2000 at Christmas, and I don't remember having much of an interest in Me... although, to be fair, I may have already been eyeing 2000 by September and was just waiting for a big enough break in the school year to reformat and reinstall everything.

I guess because I went off to university in fall 2001 and was surrounded by people who had just bought new machines for back to school 2001 (and most of those machines were not upgraded to XP), plus my mom bought a new laptop at the same time, I remember seeing lots of WinMe machines.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-10-27, 14:41:

Also, this is why DOS boot was removed ... because some brilliant marketing guy decided that if you can't boot to DOS, then at least they can't say it's unstable -- it got more stable!

Just a random thought I had - I can't remember if Me got rid of the MS-DOS mode completely, but assuming it did, there might have been another reason. Certainly into 1996, 1997, era, plenty of people were still writing games for DOS that ran... shakily at best... in multitasking Windows and that pretty much needed MS-DOS mode.

Could removing those DOS features from Me be effectively a message to those guys "okay, we're not kidding about this NT thing, you better start writing your code for DirectX and the other gaming APIs [soon] available in the NT side of the world."?

Apple tends to be better than Microsoft at Godfather-style communication with third-party developers, but if you're planning to abandon something and third-party developers don't get the hint, well, sometimes you have to up the ante...

the3dfxdude wrote on 2023-10-27, 14:41:

No. When WinME went on sale, it was also discounted. I can't remember if it was a mail in rebate, because those were popular, or […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-27, 03:31:

Considering Windows ME was only really on sale for a year and it had much cheaper and well known competition in Windows 98SE then its a wonder it sold at all, not because it wasnt any good but because people prefer to spend as little as possible.
The real problem with ME wasnt anything to do with ME it was that 98 was popular and cheap. And even once Windows XP was released people were still spending money on Windows 98 budget PCs not ME because ME then had a reputation that it wasnt popular.

No. When WinME went on sale, it was also discounted. I can't remember if it was a mail in rebate, because those were popular, or a buy it part of a purchase. But I think the upgrade version was less than 98 around $70, and $30-40 off (half off). So I think it was about $40. That was the cheapest Microsoft had done in a long time, and that lasted a few months. The reason real reasons why it was not popular were:
1) Microsoft internally trashed it, because the employees did not want another "DOS-based" OS. The employees wanted NT. Except WinXP was not ready and they were on the hook for a consumer based OS release in 2000. So the "it's buggy!" got spread in the press (even though it is essentially Win98 Third Edition). They knew this so it was discounted to recoup going to store with the boxed release as much as possible. Also, this is why DOS boot was removed ... because some brilliant marketing guy decided that if you can't boot to DOS, then at least they can't say it's unstable -- it got more stable!
2) When XP was released, even the OEMs just didn't have time to roll out many new computer products, so very few bought a computer with WinME. This is why people think -- no one used it. It was true. Pretty much every other Microsoft release had years before it was discontinued at retail. The other thing was many computers were offered with "free upgrade to ME" because while it was going to be offered, the media was not ready when the computer hit stores. But people did not do it because, apathy, 98 still worked on the machine, and going back to point #1, WinME was trashed. This again limited the presence when it was around.

When WinXP was ready (arguably buggy still -- MS was correct to push it out, I thought it was buggier on launch), then it was all over. Not only that, it got rid of the two OS tracks based on different kernels, one they really wanted, and one they had been trying to get rid of since the NT project started. Win9x was always a shell on top of the DOS kernel, but NT was just not ready until Win2000, but that was not consumer oriented.

Yeah the retail box was. Why do you think they did that?
It went RTM 19th June then retail 14th September the 24th August less than a year later XP went RTM. And people knew XP was coming, and in the last few months they held off buying to wait for XP.

One thing I will agree with you on was that MS did cripple the sales of its own OS, and it did it in more ways than one.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-10-28, 00:24:

One thing I will agree with you on was that MS did cripple the sales of its own OS, and it did it in more ways than one.

Yes, and they were trying to do one other sneaky thing. In, roughly, the 1992-1999 time frame, you only really had one price for DOS/Windows, then Win9x. Businesses buying Win9x paid the same as home users, or more precisely, businesses bought computers from OEMs who paid the same for Windows on those computers than they did on consumer computers. Then, of course, you had a different price for NT Workstation, but almost no one cared about that except for high-end things.

By the time Win2000 "Professional" (no longer Workstation - note how "Professional" suggests a broader audience) and Me came out, Microsoft was clearly laying the grounds for what they ended up explicitly doing with XP, i.e. forcing businesses to pay more for the Professional version so they could get Active Directory, group policy, etc. And, by the same logic, a consumer computer gets an XP Home licence, a serious business computer gets an XP Professional licence (or, even better for Microsoft, an XP Home OEM licence that is upgraded to XP Pro through some kind of volume licencing deal with the end-user company). But really, at a time when computers were getting "Designed for Windows 98/2000 Professional" stickers, Microsoft didn't want to wait until the XP release date to make it clear that out of those two OSes, if you were a business, it was time to open up the wallet for Windows 2000 Professional.

The downplaying of Me was entirely consistent with that - they wanted to establish a clear understanding that if you are a business, you bought the Professional OS, whether it's Win2000 Professional or XP Professional. And, assuming 98SE was no longer widely available on new computers after its release, that gave them a year ahead of the XP launch to charge businesses more - now you either got the joke Me OS or opened your wallet for 2000 Professional.

98SE was the last Microsoft OS in the lower-priced tier to come with any real businessy/management features. It's been all "Professional", "Business", and now "Enterprise" since then.