Is WIn 95 dead?

[damocles]

Given the Win9X Operating Systems. Does Win 95 have any value anymore? Does it do anything better or faster than later Oses?

 

[khat]

no - it's pretty much useless as far as I can see

why hasn't microsoft made it free yet?

cheers
KHAT

 

[Doh!]

To the contrary, would you believe that many major corporations all of the world are still using win95. When win98 came out it was very buggy. So the IT people kept waiting and waiting until the problems were ironed out. However, by the time the IT folks became somewhat comfortable with win98, win2000 came out. And now these corporations simply bypassed win98 and are waiting for win2000 to become stable enough for corporate use (some of them are using win2000 already). For corporations with more than let's say 5,000 employees, upgrading an OS is a major task.

 

[Enigma]

We're still using Win95 on half our PC's and Win2000 on the rest, total 250 or so.

 

[Blayze]

most of our computer labs at school are Win2k but a few are still Win95

 

[TechMaster]

Ay my school there are still 386's that are using Win3.11

- 1 or 2 P100 and ~20 P233MMX's that are running Win95 (the P100's are blasing fast for a P100...!!!).

- ~60 P100 witch are running Win98 (slow as hell).

- ~50 cellerons that range from 333-533 (I am not sure on the 533, but we have a lot of 466's) that are also running Win98.

- 8 P3-550 (katmai) witch are running Win98.

- 7 new P3-773 (arrived overclocked at 770 - the tceh. at the store that sold those to us was so dumb that he couldn't set the BUS/CPU rate right - they weren't trying to sell an "P3-770" to us - they just were to dumb to set it right)

 

[Moonbender]

Why should Win95 be dead? Up-to-now everything runs as good with Win95 as with Win98.
Win98 is Win95 with IE4/5 and a few gimmicks (read: junk), the real differences such as FAT32 and USB support were to some degree added in Win95 OEM2 and 2.5. USB support isn't really good, but that's it, and most people I know don't use USB yet.
Even the driver support is quite good so far, better than for 2000 in some cases, though that will change, I guess.

 

[macssuck]

I still install Win 95B on my older machines because it runs so much faster than win98 but any machine that can run Win NT Workstation does and the 24 machines I just received came loaded with Win 2K.

 

[mattyrug]

I don't think it's quite dead yet!!
My Brothers Company still uses 95b on all their Workstations, because they don't want to buy their 70 or so licenses yet, and they rarely have crashes.
Win95b works quite well on older computers, it runs faster, and a little more stable. I know a lot of people who haven't upgraded, because 95b works rock solid for 'em!! I had a lot less problems with 95b than I do with 98SE.
My second System (Tyan Trinity AGP 1598, K6-2 500/Voodoo3) is currently running Win95b Quite Well, with all the Updates, DX7, and USB/AGP support. It's really a toss up. Moonbender pretty much hit it on the head. I do like a few things in 98, RegEdit is easier to work with, and Internet Connection Sharing has made life a lot easier than manually configuring my home Network.
Also...... FAT32 Drives are supported under 95b (using a newer FDISK, or Partitioning Program), although, FAT16 seems to run a little faster.

 

[nexus9]

Windows 95 is getting pretty ancient. A friend of mine did load it on an old laptop he was given recently, as 95 uses less hard drive space than 98/NT/2000.

The company I work for uses NT4 and will probably be going to win2000 by the end of next year.

If I worked for a company that still used mostly win95, I think I'd quit... working with a 5 year old OS doesn't help your career.

-Nexus9

 

[lowtech1]

If you have ironed out the known bugs in Win95, don't use Active Desktop, and don't have the need for USB, then it better than Win98/ME.

Win95 is just as fast with applications as its younger brothers (slighly slower loading apps than bros), but much more efficient with RAM & hdd usage...And, Win95b + bug fixes is much more stable than the younger bros with out the use of the bloated & buggy Active Desktop.

 

[Haervii]

Well, I'd really wish that Windows 95 could still be used! I am going to "upgrade" my computer and replace everything but the CDROM drive and the Hard drive. I was informed that to get AGP to work, you had to have at least WIn98. I have WIndows 95 B, with USB support, also known as OSR2. I was also told that to plug my hard rive in and get everything to work, I'd need window 98. would it just be possible to use 95 with new components, and somehow get everything to plug and play? ANy omments are very appreciated, believe me, this problem has consumed too much of my time.

 

[AndyHui]

It's not dead. To all intents and purposes it's perfectly up to the job as long as you have Win95B/Win95C with all of the patches.

There are, however, 2 significant problems that prevents it from moving into the future. The first is that Office version 10 refuses to run on Win95. It's installer checks your OS version and will only work on Win98 or above.

The second issue is the inability for Win95 to support hard disks larger than 32GB. Microsoft has in fact refused to provide a fix for this. You can read more here in the KB.

 

[wj]

No win95 is not dead, I work for a company that 75% of there PC's run Windows 95. Just the new one we purchase comes with win98. And I don't think there going to buy 98upgrades for 75% of there PC's. They will run win95 on those PC's until they replace the PC's, So I would say that win95 will be here a while.



wj

 

[Eug]

If you have USB, don't even consider Windows 95. Even 95B doesn't support USB properly. If you have a good enough machine and if you have to the dough, definitely go for Windows 2000, or perhaps Windows 98 SE. I run both of these, although I'm mainly using Windows 2000 now since most of the software and drivers are finally working properly with it. Windows 2000 (with the right drivers) is definitely more stable than Win 98, although I could run Win 98 for days with no problems and no reboot. For several programs though including games and MP3 encoding, Win 98 seems faster. Win 95 invariably got unstable on me when I started added newer programs.

Windows 95 is fine if you have an older less well-endowed machine and if you only run very specific software.

 

[Haervii]

I got Win98 1st from my grandfather, LOL! Well I don't know how much good it will do me, and I see very VERY little difference between it and Win95, execpt now I can automaticlly defrag my HDD once a week