Sure it crashes, but it's good while it's running
Written: Jan 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cascading start menu, OSR2 version is fairly stable, lots of software for it
Cons: Crashes, strange design decisions, systray can grow unmanageable
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| kevins10's Full Review: Microsoft Windows 95 |
Disclaimer: I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft. I think they write shoddy code, shovel products out the door that are essentially betas and are the biggest marketing success of the century. (But not the biggest computing success, it's all about their marketing.) I do however use Win95 daily, have for a few years now and have come to like it grudgingly, so I'll try to be fair here, but you should know my potential biases before reading.
Everyone's heard of Microsoft Windows 95. Since Microsoft's operating systems are the most common ones in use, most people have also used, or at least seen, Win95 in action. When Win95 first came out, it was a pretty radical change from the previous incarnations of Windows (the last previous version being Windows 3.11). Instead of a program manager, you had a taskbar with a start button and cascading menus with folders with all your programs in them. I'm quite sure many were not happy with the changes (indeed, some people still use Win3.11), but others thought they were great. I'll admit, I was a little skeptic at first, but found I liked the flexibility the menus offered me far better than the program manager in Win3.11.
The version of Win95 I have is known as OSR2, or the second release of it. It was never made readily available commercially (unlike Windows 98 Second Edition), but you could get it with new computers and some places would sell it to you if you bought a hard drive or motherboard from them. OSR2 is a much better version of Win95, it fixed a lot of bugs from the original release and added a few features. Dial-up networking works much better in OSR2. OSR2 is also where Microsoft's FAT32 file system first showed up. FAT32 allowed you to use larger hard drives as well as to format them with smaller cluster sizes. With it, you could use 4KB clusters on large drives, where with the original FAT you would have to use 32KB or larger clusters. This is important as a file takes up at least one cluster. So a 1KB file would take up 32KB if the cluster size was 32KB. FAT32 allows you to use your hard drive more efficiently.
Highs: Cascading start menu is nice, allowing you to organize programs the way you want them. OSR2 release is fairly stable, especially if you add on IE4.01 or higher with desktop enhancements (sometimes more stable that Win98). The vast majority of software available for Microsoft OSs runs on Win95, lots of stuff to chose from.
Lows: It will crash, how often depends a lot on your usage habits. (I'm hard on a machine, mine crashes regularly.) Some really screwy design decisions -- if you update something in network settings (like an IP address for your interface card on a LAN), Win95 will essentially reinstall all networking stuff. (Win98 does this too actually.) Default install does not install a few helpful items, such as character map, but they can easily be added later if you want them. Without the IE4.01 or higher install with desktop enhancements, icons in ths system tray by the clock will not go down your taskbar but keep moving to the left. If you have a lot of things in the tray like I do (12 at last count), this will eat up your taskbar space pretty quickly. You can get the desktop enhancements by upgrading Internet Explorer to fix this though.
Bottom Line: It has problems, it will crash occasionally, but it's the most common OS out there and has lots of great programs available to use on it. It's also simple to use once it's setup, so it's really good for beginners. If you like to game, there really isn't much of a choice, you either get Win95 or Win98. Get this unless you're looking for more stability and are comfortable with doing more to get it. (I'd suggest Linux to you then.)
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kevins10
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Member: Kevin Staggers
Location: Madisonville, TN
Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 34 members
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