2009/10/21

Waking up Windows, 1985-2009 | Technology | guardian.co.uk


 I love this sort of thing.  Like a lot of people, I didn't come to personal computing until the advent of the Web.  I had used dumb terminals at Bookstop in the '80's, and at the library later on.  But I have no fond, nerdy memories of DOS games and Commodore 64's.  In 1996, when I enrolled in FSU's MLS program, I was able to use a Windows 3.1 Intel 386 PC at the library to write my papers.  This was due entirely to the generosity of my supervisor, Sarah Johnson.  At the time, only department heads had PC's  It had an early version of the Netscape browser, (What's New, What's Cool!).



I do remember the Start Me Up Windows 95 launch commercial on television.  MS put a lot of rock star oomph into Win95.  The Rolling Stones did the commercial and Brian Eno composed the startup sound .


It wasn't until I played around with Linux in Library School that I discovered the roots of the Windows graphical interface.  Take a historical GUI tour at Nathan's Toasty Technology page.  The appeal of Linux for non-command-line types like me was that you could configure your own desktop, something that neither Windows nor Apple let you do.  But the end of my exploring was a grateful return to Windows 98, which was for me consistent in look and feel, and reliable.


I am not an early adopter.  I only gave up Win98 a couple of years ago, when browsers for it began to be badly dated.  I ordered a new PC with XP rather than Vista, XP being a well-tested and mature OS, with a still massive installed base.  There is no compelling reason for businesses and agencies to go for a new OS at this point, unlike the great Y2K scare.  I actually only got XP on my work PC this year.  I had Win2K before that.


No comments: