Top 5 PC Improvements Since Windows 95

The initial release of 1995 happened on Thursday, 24 August 1995, which at the time of this writing was exactly 17 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, and 3 days ago.

I can do this math easily because of Windows 7 Calculator, by the way:

Gotta love Windows 7 Calculator.

Anyway, I remember when Microsoft Windows 95 was new, and there’s been a whole bunch of stuff that’s happened since it was first introduced 17 years ago. Here are 5 PC improvements since Win95 was released. I’ll be listing both hardware and software.

1. Optical Mouse

When ’95 was first released, everyone was still using mice that operated via under-the-mouse trackball, and they were awful. Inevitably, the rollers would get gummed up from normal use, requiring you to take apart the mouse, break out an old toothbrush and some Windex, (this was usually the most effective), clean clean clean and then put the mouse back together to use it normally again.

Mice that operate by trackball are still in use today, but only the kind where the ball is in plain sight either on the top or side of the mouse – but that’s okay because they only need to be cleaned once in a great while.

2. USB 2.0

Yes, Windows 95 did support USB, but only to 1.1 and only in the last edition of ’95 which was build 950, OEM Service Release 2.5.

USB 2.0 didn’t become a normal part of PC life until Windows 98, and we’ve basically been using the 2.0 spec ever since. While the 3.0 spec exists, it doesn’t even come close to how many people still use 2.0. You use USB 2.0 pretty much everywhere, and it’s a fair bet that if you use a wired keyboard and mouse, it’s USB 2.0. All your USB sticks are USB 2.0, and it’s probably even true your external hard drive storage, should you use it, is also USB 2.0 connected.

I honestly wonder when USB 2.0 will start falling out of favor with the masses, because at present it’s showing absolutely no signs of doing so.

3. NTFS

Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME were all MS-DOS based. Consumers didn’t see NTFS-based Windows until Windows XP.

MS-DOS was never meant to be a multi-tasking environment, and that’s a big reason why Windows crashed so much back in the day. It’s also a reason why “plain” MS-DOS hardly ever crashed since it was almost always running in single-task mode.

The NTFS architecture of XP is also what finally allowed plug-and-play to actually work like it’s supposed to, instead of what was affectionately known as “plug-and-puke” where it rarely worked right. And yes, the DOS underpinnings was a reason plug-and-play in ’95 was just so-so at best.

4. The “Windows key”

When ’95 was first released, yes there were a few PCs sold that had the Win-key a.k.a. the “Flag” key on the keyboard, but not too many.

I am a huge Win-key user because it’s always faster than using the mouse. For example, when I want to run the Registry Editor, it’s Win+R, regedit (typed), Enter. No mouse involved. Or if I want to see a quick overview of my drives, Win+E. Or if I want to minimize everything, Win+M.

5. The (good) LCD monitor

In 1995, almost nobody had LCD monitors on the desktop. And the ones on laptops were just awful. I’ll touch on that in a moment.

Tube-type monitors.. yeah, I can remember the bad old days of those quite well.

People running Windows 95 used 640×480 or 800×600 resolution, and the default refresh rate was 60 Hz. On many CRTs this resulted in a “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” noise. The solution? Switch to 72 Hz. That was always the very first thing I did with any Windows installation on a CRT back in the day, after installing the proper video drivers if the existing graphics card wasn’t automatically recognized.

CRTs were also responsible for many people getting bad eyesight way too early in life. I can remember offices that had employees who outfitted monitors with those clip-on monitor shades just to keep the brightness to a tolerable level for ergonomic purposes.

The only thing end-of-run CRTs were ever good for was gaming. I am one of those people that believes PC gaming was always better on CRT compared to LCD. But for everyday normal web browsing and other normal work, the LCD reigns supreme and there’s no denying that.

Concerning LCDs of the 1990s.. they were horrible. They were guaranteed to give you a headache after staring at one for a few minutes, and the ghosting was unbelievably bad. I’ll put it to you this way, the mouse pointer ghosted, requiring “pointer trails” to be enabled just to figure out where your frickin’ mouse pointer was. It was just bad. Really bad.

BONUS: 6. Linux

Linux in 1995 just plain sucked. It was only 4 years old at that point and barely usable. Furthermore, to actually get it, you had to buy it boxed in a store (remember, no broadband).

When I say “sucked”, an example of how bad Linux used to be was actually getting the damned hard drive partitioned and formatted properly for Linux use. Absolutely nothing was automatic, everything had to be set manually, and stuff like “How much space should I use for my swap partition?” was something you either knew or you didn’t and had to take your best guess. The nightmare of using a Linux-based OS back in the day started even before the OS was installed.

From a consumer’s point of view, you basically had to be a super-nerd to have known Linux-based operating systems even existed in 1995. Considering how well-known Linux is today given almost no advertising since its introduction, I do definitely consider “the alternative OS” a genuine PC improvement.

The improvement comes in the fact you have choice with Linux. Lots of choice. So many choices it will make your head spin. And that’s not a bad thing. Sure, it’s a bit overwhelming at times, but nothing you couldn’t make sense out of.

Linux-based OSes unofficially fell into the “usable” category right around the mid-2000s. By that point pretty much everything about the Linux environment graduated from “looks and feels like a bad copy of Windows” to a league of its own, with strong support communities, install routines that actually worked right the first time, genuinely good software and a lot of it, and a GUI environment that has little learning curve. When you install a current Linux-based OS now, what your presented with is something you can use normally the first day you run it. That couldn’t be said of Linux distros of the past, but now it can.

Linux was and still is an ever-evolving thing. And it’s also my belief that on the desktop, Linux will be your only choice in the future because both Apple and Microsoft these days are so tablet-heavy that it’s beyond ridiculous.

In other words, if you’re of the “Save the desktop!” ilk, yeah, you’d better start learning Linux now.

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