Yes, I remember when Win95 first came out. Microsoft was having a product release party at “Marriotts Great America” theme park in Silicon Valley. And was handing out FREE Demos of Win95. It was a complete OS but would expire after so many days. I don’t remember
Exactly how long the demo was good for. But I picked one up and tried to install it on my 486dx-33 computer with 4mb ram and 2x Sony CDROM. Well the installation took for ever and when it finally did complete it ran really slow. Later that year I was able to get a used VLB motherboard and a 486dx-50 CPU. And I purchased 4mb more from a newspaper add. I thought this would do it but it still ran slow with Win95. So I just used Win 3.11 WFW.
It was not until these PCI/ISA motherboards came out and were selling with an AMD 5x86-133 CPU that I purchased the combo deal from a
Local computer store. Now I was ready to upgrade to Win95. I purchased a NEW computer case with PSU for $35
And NEW budget PC Cards. All new drives and components at a budget price of course. It was 1996. By this time the prices for old model components had dropped and was more affordable. So I finally had a Win95 computer and I was HAPPY. Picked up a faster 33.3 baud rate modem and I was online with AT&T WorldNet dialup internet service. I was ecstatic because now I could go online and study online.
I could access our computer school website and docs.
But I was lucky in that I lived in Silicon Valley and there were allot of computer component stores and used computer component stores too.
Computer components were everywhere and everyone was buying and selling them. There were newspaper adds, Computer shopper magazine, Fry’s electronics, garage sales, yard sales, college parking lot flea markets, and lots of used computer stores everywhere.
My original 486dx-33 computer looked like this top image.
And my Win95 computer looked like this bottom image.