I worked at a large computer chain (R.I.P. Softwarehouse / CompUSA) from 1993 - 1996 and had been building clone computers for businesses from 1990-1993. I reme

I worked at a large computer chain (R.I.P. Softwarehouse / CompUSA) from 1993 - 1996 and had been building clone computers for businesses from 1990-1993. I remember how this played out very well. At the time, IBM had sent in scores of company reps to train up our floor staff on the advantages of OS/2 over the always-soon-to-be-released Chicago. They did a good job getting all of us to "drink the Kool Aid". I received a free (not pirated, promotional) copy of blue OS/2 Warp 3.0. It was a fantastic operating system for running a DOS based multi-node Telegard BBS and it did well with Win16 applications. The impact of Windows 95 coming on the scene, though, is difficult to fully appreciate unless you were there. We had been selling pre-orders for months and there were a myriad of promos. I remember some of those preorders were sold under the threat that there wouldn't be enough copies to go around on release day. I had been playing with pirated copies of the betas of Windows 95 for the prior two months. Even in its beta form, it ran circles around Windows 3.0/3.1 in terms of reliability. I even remember reloading my PC with the most recent beta after release because a DOS application I used ran more reliably in it than in the RTM code. Then launch day came. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in terms of a software release. We closed up at 9:00 PM and re-opened at 12:00 midnight to a line of customers that went around the building --- A line of customers ... for an operating system. We joked at the time that "Windows really was that bad". There were tons of additional promotions to ensure people came and lined up--Some RAM / hard disks selling under "cost" and others. And the atmosphere of the store felt like a party. We had theme music playing (start me up?) and some Microsoft video playing on our higher-end multi-media PCs. It was obvious to us, on the floor, trained by IBMs marketing machine, that Warp died that day. As an anecdote to the stories about IBMs marketing being a little off: I remember around the release of Warp 4.0 I saw an advertisement at a subway station something along the lines of "Warp Obliterated my PC!"-- that tagline, evidently, meant to be some hip new use of the word obliterated.