Surely that video is not a real commercial? It looks like a parody from a comedy TV series.

Man, look at Bill's glasses.

And all of this THX to AMIGA Workbench ;-)

Wow I'm no expert in old money but $99 all those years ago was a ****ton of money. Let me see if i can find an exchange rate for today's money. $285.75 in today's money. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Here's my opinion. The first true Windows OS was Windows 95 so, it's really only 20 years old in my eyes. As was said, the previous versions were only a graphical interface to DOS. Windows 95 was, and still is, the biggest groundbreaking event in PC OS history. I used 3.1 on old IBM PC's, skipped 95 and only got into the true Windows experience with 98SE. 98SE was a great OS and a big improvement over 95.

Windows95, 98, 98SE and ME all ran on top of DOS.... Microsoft just removed the step of having to install DOS first and included it as part of the Windows installer. WindowsXP was the first consumer release of Windows that was a full-fledged OS and not just a GUI running on top of another OS.

iirc music video Edie Brickel: Good Times and trailer for Rob Roy movie were on original Windows 95 CD, or were they on Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95? Still have them both somewhere in my basement collection. Nice memories and like Koniakki just said I feel so old 🙁 like it was 50 years ago.

[spoiler][youtube]kemivUKb4f4[/youtube] [youtube]iqL1BLzn3qc[/youtube][/spoiler]

btw my first contact with some GUI oriented OS was not on PC/Windows, not even on Amiga 500, it was on C-64 with GEOS back in mid 80`s, it was so awesome back in those days, didn`t had a mouse for C-64 so I had used some QuickShot II joystick to control mouse pointer, local Spectrum users hated me so much because of it 😀 [spoiler][youtube]qpX6TIa3U1o[/youtube][/spoiler]

Microsoft didn't really do much with gaming until Win95 and later the development of D3d--up to that point 3dfx had a monopoly on 3d gaming APIs with GLIDE being the only one allowing for playable frame-rate games. I began weaning from the Amiga platform in '93, but didn't think much at all of either DOS or Win1.x-3.1, as the Amiga & Workbench did everything a whole lot better. But Windows was attached to the only open hardware market segment in the personal computer landscape--what would become the x86 clone markets--whereas C= and Apple and Sun were still mired in the past of selling custom hardware at a high profit with OSes that while good (at least the Amiga OS was good at the time) really served more as dongles to the expensive hardware! Apple still uses that same business model with the Mac, today, but had it not been for the cell phone market Apple would not be around today. Apple transitioned away from being a computer company years ago--at about the time Jobs had the word "Computer" removed permanently from the company name and logo. Win95 was Microsoft's first real push into what we used to call "multimedia" back in those days, and I think it was actually Microsoft's first halfway decent version of Windows. I remember thinking that above all other things, Win95 showed me that Microsoft was really listening to its customers. A far cry from the lows the company hit in the few years leading up to Windows 8, when Microsoft pretty much ignored its customer base completely in a mad, self-destructive rush to copy Apple with the short-lived tablet fad! Heh...;) Who'd a thunk it...? I think Microsoft has recovered, but it's no accident that all of the upper management who green-lighted Win8 are no longer with the company today (Although I heard a nasty rumor that Sinofsky was back! Hopefully in a much diminished role, if any.) The good thing is that I think Win10 is by far the best thing Microsoft has ever done. And the company is far better off with a software guy at the helm than a salesman. Will they be around in another 30 years? (I won't, that's for sure, most likely...;)) I'd say that Microsoft might make it--but only if the company sticks to its core competencies. Microsoft will always be a software company with only a minor role in hardware; just as it is true that Apple is the opposite--always a hardware company with almost no presence in software. Microsoft's future depends on the company's apprehension of those facts...;) Had Microsoft added a $40B Yahoo! search engine loss to its losses in the cell-phone market and because of Win8--it would be a different story with regard to writing off ~$50B in losses! And to think that Microsoft was just blessed and lucky that the Yahoo! founder was too dumb to take the money and run!...;) Gates should send him a bonus check.

That Steve Ballmer commercial, roflmao!

I don't agree. Starting with 95, Windows became a full fledged OS with much better installation routines, hardware detection and driver installation, and a myriad of other improvements. Sure it was based on DOS but you can still say that of XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. What is the Command prompt but a carryover of the DOS days? The folder structures are still essentially the same. All MS did was remove access to the DOS underpinnings but they are still there. It's like Android. It's based on the Linux kernel but is it Linux? Thank God, no.

It doesn't matter if you agree or not. Doesn't change facts. Windows95, 98, 98SE and ME all ran on top of DOS 6.22 and DOS 7. In fact, if you actually looked at the system files for Win95, you can see where DOS 6.22 executes the commands to load Windows. You can even prevent Windows from loading at all. If you opened a "command prompt" in Windows95-98SE and ran the "ver" command, it returned the DOS version number. Windows95 even had an option to boot into DOS. After booting into DOS, it was as simple as removing "win.exe" from the config.sys and autoexec.bat files to prevent Windows from loading. Win95 even told you DOS was loading, prior to Windows loading....lol

What a pile of rubbish... Have you ever hard of DirectX, Win32API and stuff like that? 😀 Try you those in your DOS if Windows is just a GUI on top of that OS. :3eyes: :stewpid:

The original release of Win95 didn't contain Win32API. It was only 16bit. Win95B was the first 32bit release of Windows.

I thought it was rumoured many years ago that we would have a realtime OS by now? What happened to that? Must have been about 98 or so that I first heard the rumours.

The title of the storey should heave read "30 Years Ago Microsoft F'd Over IBM Through Blackmail!" or "It's Been 30 Years Since IBM Shot Themselves In The Foot!" :P

I thought it was HP MS got the GUI idea from or bought it from? or am i missing somthing

worked a few years with 3.1. not sure I would call it a "windows" as we know it now, it was pretty obvious it was a GUI of ms-dos, i had a Macintosh at that time it was way better didn't they all stole ideas from other people ? Gates and Jobs ?

Can anyone tell me how I can upgrade my Windows 10 to it?

Yeah stick a '.' between '1' and '0' job done give me a pint. 3.1 was my intro to Windows when I went from Primary School (where we all used BBC Micros) and finally got our hands on some of these PC things. The only thing I remember about them was, playing Doom during any free time we had and how great the keyboards felt and sounded when typing on them, turns out they sounded and felt great because they were proper mechanical keyboards. Not sure what type of switches they would have used, was Cherry even a thing 20 odd years ago?

when I started highschool in 1996, all the computers ran windows 3.1 then later upgraded to windows 95 /98 and then windows 2000 in 2001. no internet until later when switching over to windows 95 and windows 98. and they was slow as hell. I found out about doom. by finding the one computer in the whole computer lab that had it on it.

[youtube]kemivUKb4f4[/youtube] [youtube]iqL1BLzn3qc[/youtube]

WOW now that brings back some memories 🤓

I don't agree. Starting with 95, Windows became a full fledged OS with much better installation routines, hardware detection and driver installation, and a myriad of other improvements. Sure it was based on DOS but you can still say that of XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. What is the Command prompt but a carryover of the DOS days? The folder structures are still essentially the same. All MS did was remove access to the DOS underpinnings but they are still there. It's like Android. It's based on the Linux kernel but is it Linux? Thank God, no.

XP and on have Zero basis with DOS and never will. It has a ring memory structure pretty much like OS/2 did. A command line is not DOS based either although at one time, a DOS prompt was still made available running on top of Windows XP. There are no DOS underpinnings since Windows ME, period. 😛

Then why are many of the commands you can execute through the Command Prompt identical to those in DOS? You can not run DOS, but a lot of the basic low level functions are still there, just elaborated on and improved. It is still easy to see, even in Win 10, what the origins of the OS were. They are becoming more and more concealed, that much is true. When the Command Prompt is completely gone, then you can say there is no more dependance on old DOS functions, but still will just be more concealment.

Sorry but, that is not at all correct. I do not care about being right or wrong but with computers, they are not based upon what you think but what they are. XP and on are not based on DOS in any fashion. Otherwise, OS /2 would have to be based on DOS as well because I could run straight DOS or the built in DOS from that. Look, the reason I am sharing this is to basically eliminate any misinformation. There has not been a DOS based OS since Windows ME and there never will be again. OS /2 and Windows XP and above have the same memory type structure and underpinnings. Also, are you saying that Linux is DOS based because it has a command line? XP and on were based on Windows NT, not DOS. Otherwise, you would have to conclude that Windows NT was based on DOS as well, which is was not.

ME was a hybrid transitional OS.

No, it wasn't. ME is a straight up DOS based like the previous ones but optimized to be faster. It also removed the ability to boot up straight into DOS but was not a transitional OS.

Of course Linux is not based on DOS (but it might be better if it was 🙂). Even if Windows is not what you call "DOS based", it still has some of the low level routines. Windows NT did come about because of DOS just like every other Windows Version. Just because there is no user access to the DOS based routines doesn't mean they aren't there. Yes, ME was the last of the 9x track but it added features like system restore and other things that became standard from XP on. That's why I consider it transitional. Maybe hybrid was too strong of a description. Admittedly, I never used it and I saw many people struggle with it compared to 98SE which was always rock solid for me and never required a re-installation. I also consider 2000 to be transitional, probably more so, but it also had a lot of problems with drivers and gaming. I started with DOS on an old IBM machine and used Windows 1.0 through 3.1 but didn't really like them, skipped 95 and went to 98SE, skipped ME and went to XP which was already on SP2, skipped Vista, and went to 64 bit 7 which was already on SP1, put 8 pro on the old XP laptop and then upgraded to 8.1, and then started with 8.1 on this machine which now has 10 still on build 10240. Whatever, I still consider Windows as a true OS to have started with 95 and therefore really only be 20 years old.

Nevermind, just forget it. Please, do some research and get back to us because you clearly are unwilling to listen to experience and reality. NT came from the OS /2 work that IBM and Microsoft worked on together. There are no DOS underpinnings or tie ins at all since Windows ME. Perhaps it was best to let it go like everyone clearly decided to a while ago but, I guess I was just a glutton for punishment.

Then why are many of the commands you can execute through the Command Prompt identical to those in DOS? You can not run DOS, but a lot of the basic low level functions are still there, just elaborated on and improved. It is still easy to see, even in Win 10, what the origins of the OS were. They are becoming more and more concealed, that much is true. When the Command Prompt is completely gone, then you can say there is no more dependance on old DOS functions, but still will just be more concealment.

Why are you so staunch on this? I'm sorry but you are simply incorrect, sykozis is right on the money. ManofGod is almost there, Win ME also was DOS based. NT being the first that wasn't, and XP being the first commercial release that wasn't. The command prompt you see in Windows NT and newer has nothing to do with the kernal or the OS itself, it's simply a CLI purposefully made to resemble DOS giving an alternate way to control the OS. But make no mistake, as much as I like making batch files, CMD is just a benign program that has to interact with the NT Kernel just like every other program. Take note that in order to run DOS programs on an NT based OS you need an emulator. Completely different environment.

I thought it was rumoured many years ago that we would have a realtime OS by now? What happened to that? Must have been about 98 or so that I first heard the rumours.

We do have on microcontrollers but on PC ? I have not heard about those rumours but I dont think that it's going to happen any time soon. Not going to say it will never happen, but it does seem like a fairly challenging task...