We have a Windows 95 station at work and...

H

Headbust

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2003
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the thing is fast as hell regarding windows itself. It boots up in probably 12-18 seconds tops and just navigating around the system is as fast or faster than my SIG"d windows 7 setup.

Is it because it was so light weight back then? The system is used for our energy management system and I am finally in the process of changing everything over to our new system through out the next couple years. I was just barely getting into PC's then so i really did not care about [H}ard stuff, all it was for me was AOL back then chatting away :)

Figured i just post this as i've wanted to for awhile, I just find it amazing that it boots so quick and is just as quick as any system i have seen out there. It's a good refresher also to show how little if any windows has changed visually since then :)
 
95 was not "that" fast back in the day, what kind of hardware is it running on
 
I think computer hardware and OS bloat/features have progressed hand in hand. As computers get more powerful we fill them up with more shit to do. The time it takes to boot stays roughly the same, unless your running new software on old hardware etc. At least that has been my impression over the last two decades.
 
I remember putting Win 3.1 in Vmware awhile ago just to remember the good ole days.

Cant seem to get Win98 to boot up in HyperV though.
 
jadams said:
I remember putting Win 3.1 in Vmware awhile ago just to remember the good ole days.

Cant seem to get Win98 to boot up in HyperV though.
Click to expand...

I put 3.1 on virtual box for the heck of it. That crap boots fast lol
 
When i first got into computers in about 96 it was all at my buddies house, chatting away on AOL bla bla bla...Finally i decided to get my own PC. I bought a used one in 97 I believe. I had no idea about operating systems back then really. I bought a PC with Windows 3.1 on it and man was i bullshit. I tried everything to get that thing to run, then when i finally did i realized i could not doing anything with it :mad:
 
I'm guessing that it had little extra apps on it as well as a proportionate amount of ram. I used to run 128MB on old Pentium 1 systems that still fly to this day as far as response time. Unfortunately, most software doesn't support 95 any more. Even Yahoo messenger requires XP or newer now. If Adobe would slim Flash player down and get rid of its' bloat, those old systems might be able to actually do general web browsing again.
 
I had win98SE on a Celeron 333 box with 384MB of RAM / Voodoo3 and a somewhat modern IDE HDD. It was my DOS playing box. Super fast.

The old O.S. really does run fast on some halfway decent hardware.
 
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This is why the Android software is running good on low end processors...I have one that is running 256MB Ram and I think it has 800MHz processor. Some of these tablets are like 600MHz or less. The thing that kills modern OS's is that it is always running a ton of "enhancements" and "add-ons" that you aren't using 99% of the time. Do you really "need" all of the Windows services running? I think not.

Edit: Android tablets that is.
 
windows NT 4 will run even faster on the same hardware if it is a cpu based off of the Pentium Pro line. NT 4 had a 30% increase over 95......becuase 95 (and all othe other os based upon it) are a 16/32bit mix of code

the reason 95 runs so fast has everything to do with

a. it's limited functionality
b. non existant security
 
I barely ever saw the gui of Windows 95. I'd always drop to DOS so I could play Dark Sun or Wing Commander 2. :)

It's too bad MS doesn't include an alternative light shell that you can load in Windows 7 whenever you need more resources, or want to gain some better gaming performance. I wouldn't think it would be hard to implement either.
 
I know it isn't exactly the same, but the alternatives are getting much closer in a sense.

www.onlive.com


It is just a matter of time when the cloud will play it for you....lol
 
Gilthanis said:
I know it isn't exactly the same, but the alternatives are getting much closer in a sense.

www.onlive.com


It is just a matter of time when the cloud will play it for you....lol
Click to expand...

I use OnLive and enjoy it. Fun to play games on my crappy laptop that my physical hardware could never manage to run.

Waiting to see an app for Android though. High-end x86 apps "running" on ARM hardware... mmm. Makes me glad I got a phone with a keyboard. :p
 
fastest computer a customer ever brought to me was a windows ME box. Pushed the power button, 15 seconds later it was full booted.
 
serpretetsky said:
fastest computer a customer ever brought to me was a windows ME box. Pushed the power button, 15 seconds later it was full booted.
Click to expand...

And locked up 15 seconds later...LOL I'm just kidding.

I too would love a version of Onlive to work on Arm processors so that my Android tablet may have a chance at playing some of those games too. Time will tell.
 
Yeah, I always get a kick out of Microsoft when they bill their new OS as "The fastest version of Windows yet!". Of course that's complete bullshit, just about every new OS is slower than the last (with a couple possible exceptions - i.e. Vista > Win7). I remember getting a new "Zeos" Pentium 66 when they were first released for $3,200. It had Windows 3.11 and from a cold boot would be sitting at the desktop ready to go in about 13 seconds. Of course comparing old PC's boot times with a new PC's boot times and actually getting work done are two very different matters. But still, it seems as though things just get more and more bloated and the developers rely on the new hardware for speed.
 
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