> it wasn't really until Windows 95 that the whole thing came together.

I remember the launch parties for 95. I remember thinking to myself how strange it was to go to all of that expense to promote an OS.

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zabzonk 10 hours ago | parent [-]

they weren't promoting an OS, they were promoting a user experience - A GUI that competed with the Mac.

There were OS improvements too, but I have forgot what. The real improvements came with Win2K - one of the best versions of Windows ever.

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jonhohle 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Win2K was my favorite as well. The transparency was tasteful. Everything worked and for the most part didn’t crash. Many (most?) games worked. It ran great on a PIII 600mhz. Everything good about NT4 was better and most of the consumer friendly stuff starting to take shape. The disc was even gorgeous. Peak MS design and engineering.

	▲	SoftTalker 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yep, favorite version of Windows ever. Even with Windows 7 and XP I switched the settings back so it looked like Win2K.
	▲	porl 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Win2k was the last one I was excited about.

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jsolson 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't remember if Plug-n-Play shipped with the original Windows 95 (it's certainly there in the final OSR), but that was a pretty big shift from the manual IRQ and port mapping days of DOS/Windows 3.1.

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MBCook 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It did. That was one of its big features.

It also was the first version to remove the 8.3 limitation and give us long file names.

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conception 5 hours ago | parent [-]

They were fake long file names though. At the actual dos layer they were 8.3. And the plug and play was terrrrible. I always turned it off. Ugh the plug and play modems/soundcards were trash.

	▲	jsolson 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're not wrong, but PnP including the configuration basis for PCI which still sits at the config space layer of the latest and greatest PCIe. That's the piece I find so significant. I work with GPUs that mostly communicate over a proprietary C2C connection, but how does the OS find them? PCI enumeration.

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dylan604 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

back then, it was still plug-n-pray. it didn't work as well as it was intended when it was first available

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SoftTalker 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

IIRC we got long filenames with Win95, and a built-in network stack, no more Trumpet WinSock. And it did seem more stable, not nearly as good as NT/2000 but better than 3.1.