[beloch]

People need to go back and use Win 3.1 or MacOS 7.x to realize what a leap forward Win95 was. MacOS 7.x didn't even have preemptive multitasking! The start menu and task bar made their debut and immediately anchored the whole UI. Since then, Windows has made incremental advances (with the occasional step backwards), but no change has been nearly so radical. OS X would not have been possible without the influence of win95. We're still living in the Win95 age.

[cosmic_cheese]

OS X inherited its multitasking model from NeXTSTEP, which predates Win95 by several years.

[zzo38computer]

I have used both Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Windows 95 does have some significant benefits (e.g. you can start Windows programs from the DOS prompt (I seem to remember that you cannot do this in Windows 3.1 and in Windows 95 you can, but I am not sure if I remember correctly), and the WIN+R shortcut, and some others), but also many problems (although some can be avoided by changing stuff in the registry; I had done that to force it to display the file name extensions for all file names, rather than hiding them even if you tell it to display them; I also dislike their decision to use spaces in file names).

[quietbritishjim]

You could change the option to hide file extensions in the explorer settings windows; no registry tweak was needed.

Not wanting spaces in file names is certainly a bold opinion! I think you'll find yourself in a very small minority there.

[LtWorf]

You have to use windows 95 with a computer from 1995 to realise how painfully slow it was compared to windows 3.

[hollandheese]

Windows 3.11 loads in less than a blink of an eye on my Pentium MMX, while Windows 98 takes at least a minute to boot. This is with a 8 GB CF card as the HDD too, so the I/O is going as fast as possible.