Windows 95 anniversary

Today is the 10th anniversary of Microsoft's landmark Windows 95 release, Aug. 24, 1995. Where is the operating system now?

Bill Gates and Jay Leno at the Windows 95 launch. (Robin Layton/P-I Archive)

Well, the Windows 95 product page is still online, you can still find copies of the 10-year-old program on eBay, the little rock band that supplied the product's anthem is still around, and Mary Jo Foley reports on Microsoft Watch that there are, in fact, some people still using it to actually run their computers. In fact, some of you may be among them: According to the paper's logs, about 0.4 percent of the traffic on seattlepi.com is from Windows 95 machines.

If you're in the mood to reminisce, here's the story the P-I published on the morning of the launch, by reporter Jim Erickson. It began: "Perhaps it's fitting that the first thing many Redmond residents see on their way to work this morning will be a pair of hot-air balloons, set loose from the Microsoft Corp. campus and sporting the Windows 95 logo. For sheer superheated overinflation, it's going to be hard to beat today's arrival of Microsoft's new computer operating system on store shelves."

This Wikipedia entry has the story behind the operating system, including technical details and some trivia you might have forgotten. And this Microsoft page tells the history of Windows, including the '95 release.

For a different perspective, Larry Seltzer, eWeek's security writer, points out in a column today the ways in which Windows 95 wasn't the start of something good: "It really did change the world, and in the process it doomed us to an insecurity in computing that it's hard to see us escaping." A related story looks back at 10 years of Windows worms.

Meanwhile, Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox wants to know where the anniversary hoopla is. In lieu of that, he offers some of his own memories of the launch. Another blogger recalls the Redmond launch party in this post. BetaNews looks back on the launch in this story, accompanied by a photo gallery.

And finally, on the SuperSite for Windows, Paul Thurrott reposts his original Windows 95 review, including the screen shot that accompanied the article. It's in black and white.