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> a deeply misguided comment on HN that claimed that Windows 98 was the beginning of integrated networking in Windows. I've noticed that younger crowds seem to

by chungy 5y ago

> a deeply misguided comment on HN that claimed that Windows 98 was the beginning of integrated networking in Windows. I've noticed that younger crowds seem to treat Windows 98 as a big revolutionary release, attributing many features that were actually introduced in Windows 95 as being uniquely new to 98; rather than Windows 98 being a rather minor incremental upgrade to 95 as it actually was. Not really sure why this phenomenon has happened. Maybe people had glimpses of Windows 98 in childhood and don't know what the prior version was like? or that Windows 98 probably had a longer lifespan than 95 did? From the user perspective, almost the only differences are Active Desktop and titlebar gradients. FAT32 and USB are other tangible differences, though it's worth noting that 95B also had those features, it just wasn't available at retail.

pjc50 5y ago
Yeah, most of the big differences happened between Win95B and A, which makes them hard to count properly. USB was an absolute game-changer, for example, released in a product minor version?
- chungy 5y ago
  I suppose the logic was that if you needed >2GB disks and/or USB, your prebuilt OEM would order the special version of Windows 95 that supported them (and in all practical purposes, I don't even recall OEMs still using 95 RTM or 95A after 95B was available... even if the machine lacked either of those properties). Of course people would build their own computers from scratch in those days too and pirating Windows 95B (later, 95C) would be fairly common. It had big benefits while any Windows 95 box at the store was only 95A.
iso1631 5y ago
98 was definitely an incremental update on 95. Plus and Win95 OSR2 had brought in most of the "new" features of 98, although 98 did tie them together. But even including those features, coming so soon off the heels of the 3.11->95 change, it certainly felt a minor change to me. That said, 98 was the last of the Dos era (the less said about ME the better), so it did persist until well into the 00s for people playing games. And of course you've got the other "grown up" line of NT 3.51>4.0>2000
- scionthefly 5y ago
  Win95 was a revolution in the mswindows world (as was NT). Win98 was the refined and polished version. Not revolutionary, but fully evolved. I used both, still have both, and vastly prefer 98.
slfnflctd 5y ago
> From the user perspective, almost the only differences... From this user's perspective, Win98SE was far more stable and configurable, had vastly superior driver support and ran more types of software better. It was fantastic for everything from internet to audio editing to gaming at a time when I was doing a lot of tinkering. I struggle to think of specifics now, but I know that when I was using it a lot I ran across numerous things I valued that I couldn't do on Win95. > Windows 98 probably had a longer lifespan than 95 did? It definitely did in my experience and that of several tech-inclined folks I was adjacent to. In households with kids who paid attention to details like which OS was running, I suspect greater numbers of those kids were exposed to 98 than 95.
- lproven 5y ago
  [Article author here] > From this user's perspective, Win98SE was far more stable and configurable, > had vastly superior driver support and ran more types of software better. I worked with it, installed it and supported it at the time, and it really really wasn't. Serious business users ran NT 4. In the trade we nicknamed W98 as GameOS.
  - muststopmyths 5y ago
    I think they're saying compared to Win95, not NT.
    - lproven 5y ago
      Yeah, I know, I got that! :-) I didn't put in a lot of Win95, because it was before I went freelance. Then my work box ran NT 3.51, but a lot of the office ran W95 and I had to support it. So I did get quite a lot of experience on it. Later on, though, I put in W98 & W98SE for people with cheap & nasty PCs that couldn't run NT, and I supported a lot of boxes that were out there. It did have somewhat better driver support, yes, but every version of Windows ever has had better driver support than the preceding version. It was not significantly more stable, and on low-end or heavily-loaded boxes, I'd say _less_ stable. More types of software? About the same, I'd say. Better? On a narrow range of hardware, maybe -- things were changing fast then and by '99 or so new kit couldn't run 95 any more. It was a gamers' OS. The much-maligned WinME had better hardware support still -- for example, proper working Firewire support -- but by then everyone hated it. After a few updates it was a very stable release, it looked nice, it was a bit cleaner and faster to boot and to shut down, and it supported more memory. There was a particular period when very cheap, or old, PCs couldn't usefully run Win2K let alone XP, which really wanted 256MB of RAM or more, a big fast DMA EIDE or UltraIDE hard disk and so on, when WinME could deliver a decent internet experience on a single-core box with between about 80 to 128 MB of RAM on the low end to say 192 MB on the high end -- kit which gave a rotten experience with 2K or XP. But 98 wasn't a particularly sweet spot in my recollection.
smackeyacky 5y ago
The one release of windows I remember that had the biggest impact on networking was windows for workgroups 3.11 First one with native windows networking rather than DOS redirected drivers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lproven 5y ago
[Article author here] You make a good point. I've not seen that before myself -- I mainly inhabit the Linux/macOS space now -- but the person whom I was paraphrasing certainly seemed to think, as you say, that W98 was the big deal and marked the beginning of integrated networking in Windows. Very bizarre, because as you say, it was a minor bugfix release.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
There's really two versions of Windows 95. The original retail release is quite limited, and lacks a lot of things that people now assume were always there. There were approximately four (or six, depending on how you count) later revisions, but the big one was "OEM Service Release 2", which added support for FAT32, Infrared data, UDMA, IRQ Steering, Firewire, MMX, and P6 support. A later minor patch also added support for USB and AGP. The later OSR "2.5" also came bundled with IE4, which overhauled the Explorer interface, adding (amongst other things) the quick launch bar, IE integration (including things like the "address" bar in Explorer windows), and the Active Desktop. Today, many people assume these things came along with Windows 98 first, which is not true.

by chungy 5y ago

pjc50 5y ago

Yeah, most of the big differences happened between Win95B and A, which makes them hard to count properly. USB was an absolute game-changer, for example, released in a product minor version?

chungy 5y ago
I suppose the logic was that if you needed >2GB disks and/or USB, your prebuilt OEM would order the special version of Windows 95 that supported them (and in all practical purposes, I don't even recall OEMs still using 95 RTM or 95A after 95B was available... even if the machine lacked either of those properties). Of course people would build their own computers from scratch in those days too and pirating Windows 95B (later, 95C) would be fairly common. It had big benefits while any Windows 95 box at the store was only 95A.

iso1631 5y ago

98 was definitely an incremental update on 95. Plus and Win95 OSR2 had brought in most of the "new" features of 98, although 98 did tie them together. But even including those features, coming so soon off the heels of the 3.11->95 change, it certainly felt a minor change to me. That said, 98 was the last of the Dos era (the less said about ME the better), so it did persist until well into the 00s for people playing games. And of course you've got the other "grown up" line of NT 3.51>4.0>2000

scionthefly 5y ago
Win95 was a revolution in the mswindows world (as was NT). Win98 was the refined and polished version. Not revolutionary, but fully evolved. I used both, still have both, and vastly prefer 98.

slfnflctd 5y ago

> From the user perspective, almost the only differences... From this user's perspective, Win98SE was far more stable and configurable, had vastly superior driver support and ran more types of software better. It was fantastic for everything from internet to audio editing to gaming at a time when I was doing a lot of tinkering. I struggle to think of specifics now, but I know that when I was using it a lot I ran across numerous things I valued that I couldn't do on Win95. > Windows 98 probably had a longer lifespan than 95 did? It definitely did in my experience and that of several tech-inclined folks I was adjacent to. In households with kids who paid attention to details like which OS was running, I suspect greater numbers of those kids were exposed to 98 than 95.

lproven 5y ago
[Article author here] > From this user's perspective, Win98SE was far more stable and configurable, > had vastly superior driver support and ran more types of software better. I worked with it, installed it and supported it at the time, and it really really wasn't. Serious business users ran NT 4. In the trade we nicknamed W98 as GameOS.
- muststopmyths 5y ago
  I think they're saying compared to Win95, not NT.
  - lproven 5y ago
    Yeah, I know, I got that! :-) I didn't put in a lot of Win95, because it was before I went freelance. Then my work box ran NT 3.51, but a lot of the office ran W95 and I had to support it. So I did get quite a lot of experience on it. Later on, though, I put in W98 & W98SE for people with cheap & nasty PCs that couldn't run NT, and I supported a lot of boxes that were out there. It did have somewhat better driver support, yes, but every version of Windows ever has had better driver support than the preceding version. It was not significantly more stable, and on low-end or heavily-loaded boxes, I'd say _less_ stable. More types of software? About the same, I'd say. Better? On a narrow range of hardware, maybe -- things were changing fast then and by '99 or so new kit couldn't run 95 any more. It was a gamers' OS. The much-maligned WinME had better hardware support still -- for example, proper working Firewire support -- but by then everyone hated it. After a few updates it was a very stable release, it looked nice, it was a bit cleaner and faster to boot and to shut down, and it supported more memory. There was a particular period when very cheap, or old, PCs couldn't usefully run Win2K let alone XP, which really wanted 256MB of RAM or more, a big fast DMA EIDE or UltraIDE hard disk and so on, when WinME could deliver a decent internet experience on a single-core box with between about 80 to 128 MB of RAM on the low end to say 192 MB on the high end -- kit which gave a rotten experience with 2K or XP. But 98 wasn't a particularly sweet spot in my recollection.

smackeyacky 5y ago

The one release of windows I remember that had the biggest impact on networking was windows for workgroups 3.11 First one with native windows networking rather than DOS redirected drivers.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

lproven 5y ago

[Article author here] You make a good point. I've not seen that before myself -- I mainly inhabit the Linux/macOS space now -- but the person whom I was paraphrasing certainly seemed to think, as you say, that W98 was the big deal and marked the beginning of integrated networking in Windows. Very bizarre, because as you say, it was a minor bugfix release.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

There's really two versions of Windows 95. The original retail release is quite limited, and lacks a lot of things that people now assume were always there. There were approximately four (or six, depending on how you count) later revisions, but the big one was "OEM Service Release 2", which added support for FAT32, Infrared data, UDMA, IRQ Steering, Firewire, MMX, and P6 support. A later minor patch also added support for USB and AGP. The later OSR "2.5" also came bundled with IE4, which overhauled the Explorer interface, adding (amongst other things) the quick launch bar, IE integration (including things like the "address" bar in Explorer windows), and the Active Desktop. Today, many people assume these things came along with Windows 98 first, which is not true.