Windows 95 turns 15

Technology News : Windows 95 turns 15, Windows 95, which was separate from the company's business-oriented Windows NT product, added a number of features over its predecessors including better network support, the ability to send faxes (yes, there was a time when that was a big deal) along with basic audio recording, audio playback, and video playback tools.Windows 95 turns 15, Features now thought of as core parts of Windows, such as the start menu and taskbar, also made their debut with Windows 95. Plus, it just looked a whole lot better graphically and was far more stable than past consumer versions of Windows.

Internet Explorer debuted around the same time, but was sold separately as part of Microsoft's Plus Pack for Windows 95. It was eventually bundled in directly with the operating system in an update to Windows 95 released the following year.
By the time Windows 95 turns 15 was finally ushered off the market in 2001, it had become a fixture on computer desktops around the world.

"If you look at Windows 95, it was a quantum leap in difference in technological capability and stability," Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said at that time.
A decade and a half after Windows 95 turns 15 hit the market, though, one question looms large for Windows? Are all its best days in the past?

Clearly it was a different time and Microsoft might be hard pressed to capture that kind of consumer attention no matter what it did. But, never mind the long lines, will Microsoft be able to continue to sell Windows at the price and volume it has?

It's one of the most important questions facing Microsoft as a company. While the company has expanded far beyond its Windows roots, Windows and Office remain the engine driving the vast majority of the company's profits even as it looks to cell phones, search, and online services to augment its mainstay businesses.
At the moment, the Windows business is doing quite well, with Windows 7 selling at an impressive clip. Indeed Windows 7 is selling far faster than Windows 95 did in its early days, though that's as much a testament to how large the PC market is as anything else.
Windows 95 turns 15, The longer-term question is whether Windows can outpace what I call the generic Web experience. In the coming years, smartbooks, tablets, cell phones, Netbooks and shapes we probably haven't thought of will all be capable of delivering the Web, which is for many people their main use of a PC.
For Windows to be as relevant on Windows 95's 20th anniversary as it is today, the company will have had to manage to evolve the operating system significantly Windows 95 turns 15.