[theta_d]

Windows was made in the floppy era, not CD era. I still remember picking up my release day copy of windows 95. It was on several floppies.

[qubex]

As a teenager I avidly read some Microsoft book on the impending Windows 95 release (I didn’t have the “Chicago Betas”. I remember reading that book cover to cover. I remember that it depicted checkboxes are rhomboid-shaped, which didn’t actually appear in the final release. I remember my excitement as I queued to get my upgrade edition of Windows 95 that I then installed onto my sluggish 486DX2-66.

I miss those times.

[kevin_thibedeau]

I had an NT4 machine at work until 2007 that only had a floppy drive for writable media. It had USB 1 ports but those were unusable in NT which was why $employer kept running it.

[dboreham]

Present day Windows is NT, which wasn't made in the floppy era (floppies existed but were not practically useful by the time NT 3.1 was released).

[fredoralive]

Windows NT 3.1 seems to have come with a CD, a complete installation set of 3.5" discs, and even boot discs for the CD on 5.25" discs (and a voucher for a 5.25" complete set). So Microsoft obviously thought 3.5" discs were often going to be needed back in 1993 (and there's a notable number of people that have a CD-ROM drive, but no 3.5" drive?). See https://socket3.wordpress.com/2016/12/24/ebay-purchase-5-mic...

Frankly, I'd count Windows 95 as really being in the CD era, floppy software was getting rare than (although apparently there's a even a 39 disc floppy version of Windows 98 if you're a real masochist), but a couple of years earlier CD-ROMs were still quite niche, although a high end workstation does seem a likely candidate to have one.

[meepmorp]

I remember having installed NT Server 4.0 from floppies at least twice when it was new.

[badrabbit]

Yes, but stuff from that era still has to be supported despite rewrites.

[mgerdts]

When I installed windows 95 soon after release, I had to figure out how to dial boot it with my SLS or Slackware installation which was installed from floppies.

[robin_reala]

Where several = 13. I had to install that a good few times.

[dspillett]

And they were DMF format, 1680KiB instead of the usual 1440KiB which would have resulted in two extra disks. If you were unlucky and had an old/crap drive you might find you have to replace it to get Win95 to install. Somewhere into the 4.x line of MS Office, pre-dating Win95, this format started to be used as well.

[theta_d]

Do you remember the Weezer “Buddy Holly” video that was included to show off the multimedia features? Hilariously small resolution by today’s standards.

[theandrewbailey]

I messed up my parent's computer so many times, that my uncle (the family IT guy) just left the set of floppies so I could re-install it myself. I inevitably kept breaking Windows 95 every 8 months or so.

[badrabbit]

You're right, I just don't have memory going back that far.