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 It was August 24th, 1995 and approaching midnight - or maybe it was August 23rd approaching midnight . . . but we were there in line with hundreds of other people waiting for the release of Windows 95 at a CompUSA store in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Up until that point I had used Windows 3.1 since 1991. I was ready for something new, for sure, and Windows 95 looked exciting! New interface, better multitasking and memory management and my favorite . . . THEMES!
From Wikipedia: Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturing on August 15, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995.
Windows 95 merged Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows products, and featured significant improvements over its predecessor, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its simplified "plug-and-play" features. There were also major changes made to the core components of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly cooperatively multitasked 16-bit architecture to a 32-bit preemptive multitasking architecture, at least when running only 32-bit protected mode applications.
Accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, Windows 95 introduced numerous functions and features that were featured in later Windows versions, such as the taskbar, notification area, and the "Start" button.
Three years after its introduction, Windows 95 was followed by Windows 98. Microsoft ended extended support for Windows 95 on December 31, 2001.
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