Recalling Windows 98

Computer Shop News: The computer has been from the top of the temple to the people's homes for only a few years. In China, compared to the “computer”, this overly sci-fi name, people are more willing to use another popular title ——“computer”. In the past ten years, ordinary consumers have seen computer products of various shapes, including notebooks, desktops, and later micro-desktops. Now, tablets optimized for touch operations and tablets with the Windows 8 operating system are beginning to appear in the eyes of consumers.

However, in the era of fast-paced content consumption, I look back at the original Windows 98 operating system. Maybe its UI is not gorgeous and its functions are not rich, but it is a lot of mass consumers. The iconic product that has changed from a computer layman to a normal user.

From Windows 95, stronger than Windows 95

On June 25, 1998, Microsoft released the development of Windows 98 English version codenamed Memphis on a cluster of sounds. When the first development version of the news was released on December 15, 1996, the new operating system was also known as Windows 97 or Windows 9x. In the middle of the night of August 31, 1998, the crowd in the square in front of the Haidian Theater in Zhongguancun surged. After the zero point, the Windows 98 Chinese version set sail from here and began to serve thousands of computer users in the Chinese market. Until three years later, in late October 2001, Windows XP entered the mass consumer market. Windows 98 has gradually withdrawn from the market and entered the depths of history. According to statistics, on the first day of the Windows 98 Chinese version, the country's five starting points in 98 minutes, a total of 337 sets sold, worth about 600,000 yuan.

Windows 98 is the first major release in the operating system world following Windows 95. The two operating systems come down in one continuous line, and there is no obvious change in the user interface. The boot screen is a typical “window-shaped banner-shaped window”, the desktop layout is also based on the green background, and the tiling operation The system icon, the bottom is the iconic taskbar that is still in use today, the leftmost is the start menu, and the far right is the notification area. Today, notification areas like volume and time and date and the taskbar have been retained, but the classic start menu button has been removed from the Windows 8 touch optimization reform.

Although it looks like Windows 95, which is familiar to early adopters, because Windows 98 adds internal support for 32-bit device drivers, it is far superior to the first mover in terms of performance, as is the functionality. This includes support for plug-and-play devices, context-optimized menus for mouse optimization, and resource managers built to full Internet standards.

Computer Life in the Windows 98 Era

In the middle and late stages of the development of the Windows 98 operating system, content consumption around local and online content has also been continuously enriched. At the time of playing media files, the most commonly used player was the RealPlay player in addition to the built-in Windows Media Player. In terms of storage media, the 3.5-inch floppy disk has been the mainstream product at that time, but the concept of the USB disk began to take off at that time, but the portability is far less than the current U disk products. The U disk at that time was like a pager-sized portable flashlight, but it was surprising that after a year or two, the smaller MP3 became popular. Due to the same storage capacity, many 512MB, even 256MB MP3 players hanging on the chest, in addition to music, there will be some documents and small applications.

Together with the Windows 98 operating system, it also includes some popular local stand-alone games and online games. Since the popularity of home computers was not very high at the time, people often saw a group of people playing online games such as Red Alert, Diablo, StarCraft and Counter-Strike CS in Internet cafes. In the later period, the Stone Age, Westward Journey and Legends entered the public eye, and people’s consumption content was transferred from local to online. At that time, the user's PC content consumption life was roughly the same, and most of the games were driven by the Windows 98 operating system, but at that time, many people may not be as clear about the concept of the operating system as today.

代代改, Windows XP becomes a new favorite

Microsoft has maintained a stable rhythm in the development of Windows operating system, which also gives users the opportunity to gradually touch during the use process. A new version of the operating system with more outstanding performance and richer features. On October 25, 2001, Windows XP officially debuted. Based on the traditional layout, the new operating system introduces new shadow style features and bump display effects to win the favor of more users, and then to Windows Vista. From this time, Windows 98 gradually faded out of the user's line of sight and became part of the mass consumer's classic memories of the PC era.

In the process of development of the Windows operating system, in addition to the new features gradually being explored, the beautification of the operating system and optimization of performance is also a more interesting phenomenon. At that time, many third-party beautification softwares appeared in succession to meet the needs of users. Take Windows XP as an example. The most popular ones are Windows Optimizer and Super Rabbit. These softwares are just simple personalization of the operating system. In the later days, many beautification plug-ins even have the operating system user interface customized to be completely different from Windows XP. Ability.

Software and hardware interactions make Windows 98 exit the stage

Until now, there has been a very hot discussion proposition in the market, "Whether it is software adaptation hardware or hardware decision software" ; In fact, the answer to this question will be different on different occasions. But in most cases, the hardware determines the characteristics of software development is more obvious. Taking Windows 8 as an example, due to the popularity of touch devices, Microsoft began to introduce touch support in the new operating system, and innovated the operating system user interface for touch devices, such as the refreshing Metro UI. From this perspective, Windows 98 fades out of the public eye, from the rapid development of today's hardware industry, or the rapid development of productivity. But in any case, Windows 98 is the threshold for many users to first contact the "computer", leaving the classic memories and imagination of ordinary consumers on computers and the Internet.