Windows Evolution

Two different roads

Two primary versions of the Windows operating came into existence in the mid 90s, Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. Windows NT 4.0 was designed to be a highly stable and secure operating system for the business environment where stability and reliability were of prime consideration, such as for operating a business or network.

Windows 95 was designed to a low cost, consumer version of Windows. Windows 95 did contain some network functionality and could be a client on a Windows NT network, but it was nowhere near the network powerhouse that Windows NT 4.0 was designed to be. Windows 95 did not have the extensive security that Windows NT offered, and it could not operate as the large network serve the way NT could. The focus of Windows 95 was mostly for general desktop operation. Win 95 could do a little bit of everything, but excelled at being a desktop OS.

Users of both Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 95 had their share of complaints. Windows 95 was not stable enough, while Windows NT 4.0 was not very user friendly and did not contain the Plug and Play functionality of Windows 95.

A few years later, Microsoft released Windows 98 to a lukewarm reception. When Windows 95 first came onto the market, it sold like hotcakes. Hundreds of thousands of copies flew off the shelves in a matter of days. By comparison, the transition from Windows 95 to Windows 98 was much slower. Windows 95 had been a huge improvement over the older Windows 3.11.

In comparison, Windows 98 did not appear to offer many improvements over Windows 95. The Windows 98 GUI was modified and improved, and protected mode memory management had also been improved (this meant better handling of GPFs if a program crashed). The operating system was more likely to handle a fault correctly without allowing the error ro affect other parts of the system.

From a layman's point of view, however, Windows 98 was just more of the same with a little spit and polish thrown on. The real improvements that Windows 98 offered were buried inside the operating system (such as the improvement memory management), where the user never even got to see them.

System help files were expanded to be more concise and offered clearer error messages. Some new diagnostic tools were also included. That made bench technicians everywhere very happy because the new tools made diagnosing and correcting Windows problems much easier. Eventually the world cycled to Windows 98, but not because it wanted to. It did so primarily because Windows 98 became standard on the vast majority of new computer systems.