Teens seeing Windows 95 for the first time will make you feel ancient (video)

8 Mar 2016

Teens from 2016 reacting to a Windows 95 computer for the first time is equally hilarious and horrifying

Do not read this or watch the accompanying video if you struggling with a mid-life crisis. Teens discovering the Windows 95 operating system for the first time is both hilarious and horrifying.

Most of us in the working world remember Windows 95. 20 years old last year, it was for many people their first work or home computer.

Selling 7m copies in the first few weeks, Windows 95 ended the drudgery of using DOS (that’s disk operating system) where you practically had to code in commands to open applications or documents.

In fact, today’s Windows 10 owes a lot of its structure and appearance to Windows 95, but don’t tell the kids that.

This video from Fine Brothers Entertainment, which shows teens getting to grips with technology from the past, reveals a rather sad fact for anyone who had to use Windows 95 – that there are people of voting age who weren’t even born when Windows 95 came out. Truth.

Presented with a 1995-era Dell desktop computer, the kids’ reactions are something else:

  •  “It’s a Dell, not the singer!”
  • “I have seen them in libraries.”
  • “I have no clue what year this is from, but I feel like this is before I was born.”
  • “For me, this is like the first computer ever made.”

The kids then struggle with turning it on, confusing the monitor for the power button:

  • “The noises are very interesting I don’t think I’ve ever heard a computer make these sounds before in my life.”
  • “It’s prehistoric. It’s an old dinosaur.”
  • “You get a snack while it boots up?”
  • “95, as in 1995?”

Their reactions to when Windows 95 boots up are both funny and perceptive:

  •  “Everything looks so dull and ancient.”
  • “It looks almost like the Windows operating systems of nowadays, only just not as refined. Rough, sharp edges.”
  • “Very blank, nothing going on.”

Asked what they find familiar and realising Windows 95 predated Wi-Fi:

  •  “Recycle bin, My Computer and that’s it!”
  • “The dreaded Internet Explorer, I can only assume it is worse than we think it is.”
  • “Wait, is this dial-up?”
  • “How do I get on the interent if there is no Wi-Fi?”
  • “Wait, what is a modem?
  • “If you go anywhere today and they don’t have Wi-Fi that is the worst thing that can happen to you.”

Pondering the history of computers and being told that before Windows 95 there was only DOS, they said:

  • “So there was a lot of lost people?”
  • “So how would you navigate stuff.”
  • “DOS, oh, I’ve heard that.”
  • “That is such a bitch.”

Realising that it took 13 floppy disks one by one to install Windows 95:

  • “Bill Gates is practically the father of software.”
  • “Whoa! That’s intense!”
  • “It’s crazy to think my cellphone is more powerful than this.”

Enjoy! Or endure …

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com