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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

People forget that for a VAST majority of computer users, they may have never seen a GUI, or barely used a Mac for awhile. Many people went from DOS -> Windows 95 without stopping at Windows 3.1.

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Majority? World wide maybe, but not in the US or Western Europe. I'm looking at some old ads here from end 1993, and even their cheapest computer (a 386DX-40) came with WfW 3.11.

People weren’t really buying computers every 3 years then. They were way too expensive for most people to do that. My first windows 95 machine replaced a 10+ year old TRS-80.

Are you sure you remember that period correctly? (the general situation, not your personal situation at home). Windows 3.1 was everywhere at that time. And the 386dx that I mentioned cost 1200 euro (calculated with an inflation calculator).

Both are true. Because this was a time in which a large portion of people buying computers weren't existing computer users. 3.1 was very popular, and lots of existing computer users held on to their computers for a while. The PC market grew 100% just between 1994 and 1996.

> the general situation, not your personal situation at home

My Am486DX4/100/24/850+1600/CD/EdisonGold16 was replaced by Tualeron1300/i815/256/40+80/AC97/DVDCombo

*shrug_emoji*

That's completely ridiculous. There was an entire decade of windows before windows 95. Very few people in 1995 would have had a 10 year old 286 PC, yet never used a GUI.

Windows 3.0 came out in 90, and 3.1 came out in 92. There was very little adoption of the earlier versions, and even 3.0 adoption was sparse. 95 came out in, well, 95. People kept computers longer and upgraded much less back then. The previous post was not ridiculous.

> The previous post was not ridiculous.

it kind of is when you consider Win95 as 'the first good PC gui'.

people had been using OS/2 just fine, and Win3.1 was basically whatever a power user needed to be with the amount of aftermarket shells and front ends for it.

A midnight commander user might argue that Win95 was the start of the 'forced-bad' GUI experience.

Yes, Win95 was a nice jump in UX for the standard lay person -- but it wasn't novel in that; there were lots of options for the PC user.

Look at the numbers - a vast majority of people had no computer before Windows 95 - arguably Windows 95 is about the time computers started taking off and going mainstream.

I went from a 386DX2 to a Pentium 2-class machine in one jump, simply because it wasn't affordable for quite awhile (my first actual "my" computer was Windows 98 iirc).

Look at the numbers

What numbers? You just gave a single anecdote that doesn't even support what you were saying.

https://techland.time.com/2013/05/07/a-brief-history-of-wind... Here for some - Windows 95 sold 40 million copies in its first year, way more than the install base of windows before that.

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