Crowds of computer geeks lined up for hours and many electronics retailers were open at midnight in order to handle the demand for the new Operating System.
Microsoft spent over $300 million marketing Windows 95, including a catchy jingle from some rock band called the Rolling Stones or something like that, and a cringe-worthy video by some cast members of the popular sitcom "Friends".
Windows 95 succeeded the popular Windows 3.1 / 3.11 For Workgroups, The Graphic User Interface (GUI) was revolutionary, what with the "start" button and the capability for long file names.
It wasn't all wine and roses. For some, upgrading from Windows 3.1(1) to 95 was a strain on their "state-of-the-art" computers, and some (like myself) had to wipe the hard drive and start fresh because the upgrade didn't work as planned.
The internet was still in the early stages of its infancy. in fact, the now infamous Internet Explorer wasn't even installed with 95. It came few months later. Once the internet began to take its hold on society, however, the need for a computer made 95 the industry standard.
Of course, looking back, it seems so amazing at how far we've come since those days of yesteryear. I can remember Windows 95 on 13 floppies. It's successor, Windows 98, was on 38! not only are floppies obsolete, but Windows 95 is now all but a memory. It may exist on nostalgic machines or in a virtual machine environment, or as an emulated ROM, but it was a cornerstone in the computing world that made modern-day computing what it is and will be regarded as one of the most iconic OS's to have come along.
