It was on August 24, 1995 that Windows 95 was released, amidst much anticipation. It was the most widely anticipated Windows release of all time, and the runner up really isn’t close. The idea of people lining up for blocks for a Microsoft product sounds like a bit of a joke today, and the more time goes on, the bigger of a joke it becomes. But I’m serious that in 1995 it happened.

Windows 95 promised to be the biggest leap Windows users had experienced to date. Windows 3.1 and Windows 3.0 before it were both runaway successes, but they had limits. They could multitask, but it wasn’t modern pre-emptive multitasking. Instead, the applications cooperated rather than the operating system being able to hand out resources. This meant a poorly behaved program could do a lot more to gum up the works in 1994 than it can do today, since the operating system just had to trust all of the programs to cooperate fairly.

Anticipation of Windows 95 was widespread. Consumers were eager for the new benefits, even if they didn’t quite understand what they would be. Computer hardware makers and retailers were looking forward to the boost in sales. I started at Best Buy in late May 1994, 15 months before Windows 95’s release. I got questions about Windows 95 pretty much from day 1. And the corporate office was training us on how to suggest upsells pretty much from the day I started too.

Windows 95’s hardware requirements stated a 386DX or better processor, 4 MB of more of RAM, and approximately 50 MB of disk space. The minimum most of us recommended at the time for acceptable performance was a 486 faster than 33 MHz, 8 MB of RAM, and 100 MB of disk space. You really needed a Pentium-class machine to be happy with Win95, and I think Win95 did a lot to goose Pentium sales for Intel.