5 ms·

Awww, "My Briefcase"! I had totally forgotten that was a thing :) What a nice little nostalgia trip.

lostgame 6y ago
Omigosh, I really miss the heck out of when Windows had charm, and personality like this. Stuff like Hover! - getting that Weezer music video with the Happy Days set on the Win 95 media edition or whatever...such cool little things that displayed a sense of ‘fun’ about very business-centric software.
- Geezus_42 6y ago
  Hover!!! hover.io
- Geezus_42 6y ago
  Nvm, apparently they shutdown the web version... :(
- netsharc 6y ago
  My Pentium 100 could play this 320x240 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc fullscreen with no choppiness. I had forgotten about this video until I saw it last year... But Windows had skeumorphisms, even nowadays the screen with everything minimised is called "the desk[ ]top". But I guess briefcases and recycle bins made things relatable...
square_usual 6y ago
As an 8 year old child, I never understood what briefcases were but that didn't prevent me from having tons of them.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  I used win98 regularly back then. Never touched briefcases. I’m not sure it was too popular.
- vel0city 6y ago
  Briefcases were supposed to be a tool to easily sync a directory structure with removable storage or a spotty network connection. Say you've got a computer at home and a computer at the office. You do a bit of work on some files over the weekend with your files in your briefcase. When it is time to head to the office on Monday you pop in a floppy disk (or PDA, or some other removable storage) and sync your briefcase to it. Get into the office, pop your floppy into your work machine and re-sync your copy of the briefcase there. You don't have to remember which files potentially updated and you don't have to work off your removable media the entire time. It was a neat concept. I used to use that to sync stuff stored on my school's student network drive with a floppy (and later flash drive) with my home PC. They definitely didn't describe it well unless you went digging for why it exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows)
  - asadlionpk 6y ago
    a floppy-based Dropbox.
    - vel0city 6y ago
      Exactly, right? Can't believe people fell for Dropbox when you could build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
      - asadlionpk 6y ago
        Ha! Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
        vel0city 6y ago
        Oops, that's what I meant. Thanks!
      - 6y ago
zozbot234 6y ago
The Briefcase feature was used to keep folders up-to-date across multiple machines, via removable media (as opposed to a network connection). You can still do this today using rsync.
- stonecharioteer 6y ago
  Wait... Briefcases are analogous to rsync?! Wow.
  - menybuvico 6y ago
    Yes, and they were really handy too. As others mentioned, they were also buggy and never really caught on. I still have a bunch of floppy disks with briefcases in them. Alas, the feature has been removed from recent versions of Windows.
- nsomaru 6y ago
  Dropbox for sneakernet
jack1243star 6y ago
To this day I use an USB drive with some rclone batch script to emulate this feature.
beagle3 6y ago
It was buggy, mostly about detecting and overriding changes, but also some versions had problems with 0x00 and 0x1A bytes in files ... after losing a few files to briefcase, the only nostalgia I have is for eradicating it from any machine i used.
dm319 6y ago
I always thought the briefcase came in with Windows Me. As others have mentioned, it was buggy and I lost files on it, so while I liked the idea, I had to stop using them.

Omigosh, I really miss the heck out of when Windows had charm, and personality like this. Stuff like Hover! - getting that Weezer music video with the Happy Days set on the Win 95 media edition or whatever...such cool little things that displayed a sense of ‘fun’ about very business-centric software.

Geezus_42 6y ago
Hover!!! hover.io
Geezus_42 6y ago
Nvm, apparently they shutdown the web version... :(
netsharc 6y ago
My Pentium 100 could play this 320x240 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc fullscreen with no choppiness. I had forgotten about this video until I saw it last year... But Windows had skeumorphisms, even nowadays the screen with everything minimised is called "the desk[ ]top". But I guess briefcases and recycle bins made things relatable...

square_usual 6y ago

As an 8 year old child, I never understood what briefcases were but that didn't prevent me from having tons of them.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
I used win98 regularly back then. Never touched briefcases. I’m not sure it was too popular.
vel0city 6y ago
Briefcases were supposed to be a tool to easily sync a directory structure with removable storage or a spotty network connection. Say you've got a computer at home and a computer at the office. You do a bit of work on some files over the weekend with your files in your briefcase. When it is time to head to the office on Monday you pop in a floppy disk (or PDA, or some other removable storage) and sync your briefcase to it. Get into the office, pop your floppy into your work machine and re-sync your copy of the briefcase there. You don't have to remember which files potentially updated and you don't have to work off your removable media the entire time. It was a neat concept. I used to use that to sync stuff stored on my school's student network drive with a floppy (and later flash drive) with my home PC. They definitely didn't describe it well unless you went digging for why it exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briefcase_(Microsoft_Windows)
- asadlionpk 6y ago
  a floppy-based Dropbox.
  - vel0city 6y ago
    Exactly, right? Can't believe people fell for Dropbox when you could build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - asadlionpk 6y ago
      Ha! Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
      - vel0city 6y ago
        Oops, that's what I meant. Thanks!
    - 6y ago

zozbot234 6y ago

The Briefcase feature was used to keep folders up-to-date across multiple machines, via removable media (as opposed to a network connection). You can still do this today using rsync.

stonecharioteer 6y ago
Wait... Briefcases are analogous to rsync?! Wow.
- menybuvico 6y ago
  Yes, and they were really handy too. As others mentioned, they were also buggy and never really caught on. I still have a bunch of floppy disks with briefcases in them. Alas, the feature has been removed from recent versions of Windows.
nsomaru 6y ago
Dropbox for sneakernet

jack1243star 6y ago

To this day I use an USB drive with some rclone batch script to emulate this feature.

beagle3 6y ago

It was buggy, mostly about detecting and overriding changes, but also some versions had problems with 0x00 and 0x1A bytes in files ... after losing a few files to briefcase, the only nostalgia I have is for eradicating it from any machine i used.

dm319 6y ago

I always thought the briefcase came in with Windows Me. As others have mentioned, it was buggy and I lost files on it, so while I liked the idea, I had to stop using them.