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Windows 95 Information Page

August 24th --- The release of Windows 95 was a day of great moment in the life of Western society or so the publicity coming from Seattle seemed to imply. Several years ago it would be hard to imagine a software program being greeted with such fanfare and hoopla (Very little of it spontaneous). For many computer types the wait for Win95 was excruciating and rather maddening. There were innumerable semi-official dates of release only to be later postponed. The plus on all this delay is that Windows 95 is the most heavily pre-tested software ever released. I am not sure, however, whether all that testing really assured a very safe product. I still have hangups with considerable frequency. More testing was done, but the operating system is more complicated and therefore more can go wrong.

With a new operating system like Win95, which really is a fundamental break from Win 3.1 or 3.11 and dos, it will be increasingly important to rely on the expertise of a variety of people. I have gathered on this page a good deal of the available help files and sites for Win95.

  1. Books and Magazines--The dozens of books that are available on the subject.
  2. Microsoft Help for Win 95
  3. Network Support Group (WIU)--Support groups on Campus like the Internet Support Association.
  4. "Other" Win95 Help Resources on the Web, FTP, and Gopher sites.
  5. The Painless Upgrade--Upgrading to Win 95.
  6. What sort of a System to Upgrade to Win95?
  7. Software Download Sites--For Win 95.

I think it might be useful to have one, or a few central sources, where we could collect information on Win 95. and related network issues. I have compiled a list of some of the Magazines and Books on Win95, Web sites with Win95 information, Win 95 shareware programs, & Tips on Upgrading to Win 95.

(1) Books and Magazines on Win95

I would very much like suggestions here in the forms of titles and even better a candid review of a book or aricle that you found useful. What have you read lately that was particularly helpful? We are all new in the use of Win95 and can use any suggestions. Let me start off with several books and magazines.

Books

  1. Livingston, Brian and Davis Straub, Windows 95 Secrets 3ed. ed., (IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.: Foster City, Ca. 1995) I have only glanced at this edition, but I have found previous Windows Secrets to be very useful. (Includes a cdrom)
  2. Person, Ron et al., Using Windows 95 (Que Corporation: Indianapolis, In., 1995). It comes with cdrom loaded with Win95 utilities.
  3. Rathbone, Andy, Windows 95 for Dummies (Foster City, Ca. :IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 1995) .. I have a visceral reaction to the title of this series, but it is a pretty good introduction.

Magazines

  1. Byte (August-- )
  2. PC Computing (August-- )
  3. PC Magazine (August-- )
  4. PC World (August-- )
  5. Windows (August-- )

I realize that this is a very open-ended listing of magazines, but it fits the reality. All recent PC computer magazine that have offered reviews of Win 95, undocumented tips, short cuts, comparisons of Win 95 with OS 2 and Win 3.1, etc. The latest issue of PC Computing (November) has a 2001 tips on Windows article, and the November issue of Windows compares Win 95 with Win 3.1 in the running of several programs. Suprisingly a Gateway 385 SX 25 with 4 megs. ran Excel and several other programs twice as fast on Win 95 as on Win 3.1. You do not need to have to have a Pentium 133 with 32 mgs. of memory -- though it would be nice -- to run Win 95. The very real constraint in comparison with Win 3.1 is that you should have at least 100 mgs. of free space on your hard drive. It is much preferable to buy the CDRom version. Many programs on the CDRom are not included on the discs.

Some Specific Magazine Articles

  1. Crawford, Sharon and Charlie Russel "Tips for a Trouble-Free Upgrade," PC World September, 1995, 100-102.
  2. Dunn, Scott "Manage Files?" PC World, 112.
  3. Dunn, Scott "How Do I Optimize Peformance," PC World, 112-122.
  4. Dunn, Scott 'How Do I Customize My Desktop/" PC World, 122-124
  5. Goodkin, Dan "How do I Launch Applications," PC World ,September, 1995, 102-104
  6. "2,000 Tips on Win 95, Windows Magazine November 21, 1995, 24-138. There is a great deal of useful information here.
  7. Win 95. Technological Horizons in Education

(2) Microsoft Win 95: Help Site Resources

  1. The Microsoft Corporation: Win 95 Help

    • Microsoft--Any such listing on Win 95 help must begin with the "source" on Win 95: The Microsoft Corporation
    • WinNews Listserv This is a very useful publication that arrives twice a month. I have received this since it began. I plan to put the older issues into HTML format and archive it here. It really is the latest from the Microsoft perspective. One very useful feature is a posting of the latest updates to Win 95. For example in the October 16th issue it gives download instruction for a new beta version of Explorer (Win 95 file manager). To sign up:

      1. Send Internet e-mail to: ENEWS99@MICROSOFT.NWNET.COM
      2. Send the message from the account that you wish to subscribe (some people use more than one e-mail account)
      3. Subject line should be blank
      4. Body of message should ONLY have in the text:

        SUBSCRIBE WINNEWS

    • FTP Microsoft--You can find additional articles on Win 95 at this FTP site and on the Microsoft Network homepage.

    (3) Network Support Group (WIU): Win 95, Mac, Internet in the Classroom

    The association was formed in the Spring of 95 and has been involved in a number of workshops on the use of the Web and Internet. To some degree John Murphy in Faculty Development has taken over many of the organizing details of the association. John and I both feel that it would perhaps be best to subsume the association into a larger Network Users Group (?) or the like.

    (4) Win 95 Sites on the Web--Other Voices than Microsoft

    This is a very preliminary list. I will be adding to it continually.

    1. Barrys Windows'95--page
    2. Barry"s Windows'95 slip How-to
    3. Craig's Windows 95 Page
    4. The Computer Paper
    5. InterNet Direct Win95--help desk
    6. Windows 95 Dial-Up Networking White Paper
    7. Window's 95 FAQ
    8. The (Unofficial) Windows 95 Home Page
    9. Windows 95 Info Page
    10. Windows 95 Page!
    11. Windows95 TCP/IP Setup FAQ
    12. The Windows 95 Web Page

    (5) The Painless Upgrade--Gravitating to Win 95.

    Upgrading to Win 95 is a considerably more difficult decision than previous upgrades to a new version of WP for Windows, Microsoft Word, the latest version of Dos or even the upgrade ot Windows 3.0. Win 95 unlike earlier version of Windows is a true operating system rather than simply a graphics overlay over the Dos operating system. It is also a transition from 16 bit code to 32 bit. Given the need for the program to remain compatible with 16 bit programs in dos and Windows it was necessary for Microsoft to blend 16 and 32 bit components into Win 95. The long delay in releasing and the very extensive of prior beta versions is indicative of the difficulties that Microsoft confronted. These decisions to upgrades are further complicated by the problems we have are having in intergrating Win 95 onto the lan. At this point without a permanent IP address most lan services can not be run through Windows. Additionally we have all heard the horror stories that Win 95 will require 16 mg. of memory a 2 gig hard drive, 17" monitor and Pentium 100 at a minimum. This section will attempt to summarize the collective wisdom on the decision to upgrade. One very useful guide on upgrading to Win 95 is:

    • Crawford, Sharon and Charlie Russel "Tips for a Trouble-Free Upgrade," PC World September, 1995, 100-104.

    (6)System Requirements--What sort of a computer (Pentium 133, 386 16 sx ?) does Win 95 require?

    Obviously in a perfect world we would all have Pentiums 200pro, with 64 mgs. of memory and 21" monitors. Prior to the release of Win 95 there was a considerable amount of hype and exaggeration in many of the PC magazines stressing the need to upgrade our sytems. In the November issue of Windows there was a very useful article that offered a series of comparisons of Win 95 and Windows 3.1 running several different programs. Some of their findings were quite striking. The low end machine was a Gateway 396 sx 25 with 4 mgs. of memory. Running the three test programs, one was an Excel macro, Win 95 ran the programs about twice as fast as Windows 3.1. This is of course not an argument not to upgrade, but it does suggest that if you are really interested in upgrading to Win 95, and have been running Win 3.1, it is a reasonably safe move even on a "low end machine". The one caution that I would stress here is that you need at least 50 mgs. of free space on your hard drive. It would also be beneficial to upgrade to a CDRom and use the CDRom version to load Win 95. It is both quicker to load Win 95 this way rather than messing with 15 discs or so, and additionally many of the Win 95 support files are only available on the CDRom version.

  2. Tips on Upgrading

    3. This assumes that you accept the present reality at Western that Win 95 and the network are not in sync yet. The problems with Win 95 and the network will not be resolved until at least the end of the fall semester. If you are installing it at home and will be running slip or ppp to access the network, I had no problems running Win 95.
    • Back up your hard drive if possible. While most people have had few difficulties in upgrading to Win 95 you don't want to lose any crucial files. You should have a backup disk with the following files. It should be a bootable disk with your autoexec.bat and config.sys files, mem.exe, msd.exe, edit.com, attrib.exe, fdisk,exe, format.exe, sys.exe. These are all dos files. If this all seems Greek to you then don't bother with this backup disk.
    • Make sure that you have plenty of space on your hard drive before upgrading. At a minimum you should have 50 mgs. free.
    • Until we resolve the problems with Win 95 and the Lan you want both Win 3.1 and Win 95 on your system. When installing Win 95 do not install it in the Win 31 directory.
    • In my own experience I had no difficulty installing Win 95 on a 486 66, 486 100, 486 133, and 586 166+.

    (7) Windows 95 Software

    1. Net EX Unofficial Windows 95 Software Archive
    2. Oakland Software Repository--This is a mirror of the Simtel archive. It is a very good site for software.
    3. Stroud's Consumate Winsock Apps
    4. Software Net--This is a commercial site and offers 8,000 titles. Obviously these are more expensive than the shareware programs at the other sites on this list.
    5. Windows Shareware Archive (Coyote)--A very good site
    6. Virtual Shareware Library--This is both a Windows and Dos library.
    7. Virtual Shareware Library--This is a mirror of the Virtual Shareware Library.
    8. Windows Utilities Cica)--Cica at the University of Indiana. This is the source for Windows utilities, but it is usually impossible to get on. There are a number of mirrors of this site. This is a ftp site /pub/pc/win3/ List--This a very useful collection of Windows 95 programs
    9. Windows Utiliites (Wustl)--This is a mirror of Cica and of Simtel. Good site, but also difficult at times to get on. This is an ftp site /systems/ibmpc/win3.

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