of Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP and more....

1. Of Windows 95, ME, NT and more...
It was hot summer afternoon, some five or six years ago. I had just
finished my lunch box. My daughter who was some 10 years old then, called
me anxiously over my cell. She was very excited and somewhat frightened.
She spoke in Marathi, “Baba, mee atta computer ughadala, tar computer
ughadalach nahi, veglech kahitari ughadale.” (“Dad, I just started computer,
but computer didn’t open, something else opened”).
I could rarely get her. I asked her to calm down and read or explain what is
she seeing on the screen. I was expecting something like “Bootable device
not found”, guessing that the hard disk had gone corrupt. She said, there is
dollar sign, and a bar is appearing and disappearing again and again, and
above that, I can see “….” , I can’t remember now what she exactly said, but
there was a word “linux” in that, and I immediately understood what must
have happened. The evening before, I had installed Linux, so the PC turned
to duel boot, and she had started Linux. :)))
Purpose of narrating this is to highlight how PC is synonymous to Windows,
even for kids, atleast in India.
When I joined, or I thought I joined, the programmers league somewhen in
1997-98, the programmers world was divided in two major groups. Unix
users and Windows users. Unix users considered Windows users as
secondary citizens. And for this, Windows users were not having much
objection. And in windows users too, there were sub-castes. Those who were
doing Windows API programming were at the top of the hierarchy. They
usually were using C and its various jargon words, pointers, callback etc.
Below them were others, using C++ for application programming, and at the
bottom, there were Visual Basic users.
Starting from Visual Basic 5 and 6, this picture started to change. After
Activex specifications were released, the gap between c++ and VB started to
diminish. I am not sure, but non Microsoft companies released CORBA
specifications to beat Activex. This was also the dawn of dotnet wave, y2k
etc. I remember full page advertises in newspapers, offering courses in
Activex, Information Highway( AKA Internet.) The focus of Windows world
shifted from desktop application to MTS (Microsoft Transaction Server),
client server applications etc.

2. We used to add commands in old dos autoexec.bat file, to automatically start
Windows 3.1. One of my senior installed Windows 3.1 and I guess he
intentionally left for home, keeping the system open. Screensaver started and
no one of us was aware what it was. Windows Logo was flying all over the
screen. We thought it must be a virus. Accidentally, one of us moved the
mouse and viola!!! Windows logo on the black screen vanished. But then
confusion again. What is that we are seeing? Fortunately, there was a menu
bar at the top, resembling many of the dos programs. We managed to use
“Exit” in the File menu, and quitted Windows.
Windows 3.1 was no more than a toy, atleast for us. We used to add
commands in old dos autoexec.bat file, to automatically start Windows 3.1.
Windows 95 was big change, where Windows used to start directly winthout
Dos. But I think, we had to “show” that Dos was already installed, and then
only we could install windows on top of that. Slowly windows 98 crept in.
And then not so successful version, Windows ME. Those who were slightly
“learned” brought Windows NT. They used to say, “Its kernel is much more
stable, it has a server version” etc. For most of us, that all were the same,
because the interface didn’t change dramatically. The major change we
noticed after Windows NT, was that old “Novel Netware” file server was
replaced by NT server and sharing files etc. was much more easy.
Soon after Windows XP appeared, there was much much bigger change. The
INTERNET. At that time, it was still a toy for most of us. In our company, at
the start, there was a special “Internet Room” with modem and all that.
Internet was used only for official mails, with the account provided by
VSNL, uisng outlook.
Later, someone of us discovered “other” uses of it. We just know how to open
Internet Explorer, open a site, and close it. No one was so expert and we were
not aware, the explore stores the history. Fortunately, one of us came to know
where the history is stored and cautioned us.
Another major breakthrough was “Boradband”. This brought the Net
connection to all the terminals. We were so so happy that, we could use it,
without filling columns like “Name”, “Purpose of use” . “start end end times”
etc. in the register. But soon, the usage exceeded so much that company
restricted the access for an hour for all of us, and for full time for the bosses.
In those days, the news “Net is on” used to spread within a minute, and all of
us used be become very “busy” for an hour. This used to be the only time,

3. when there was a pin drop silence”. The time used to be similar to the “Water
time” in the chawls. When the water tap starts making hissing noise in the
chawls, everyone gathers around with pots of all the sizes, buckets, heaps of
cloths, toothbrushes with toothpaste on it etc. etc. Everyone was busy
downloading MP3s, reading mails, stock quotes, news etc. Then popular
brands like rediffmail, rocketmail and even hotmail are nowhere nowadays!!!
I must agree and many like me will agree that we are what we are only
because of google. Earlier, there were atleast a dozen search engines, Tripod
and Lycos are the only names I could remember now. I guess both tripod abd
lycos were merged together afterwards. There also was an application named
“copernic” which used to combine all the results of different search engines. I
first read about “google” on Yahoo! Homepage. The tone in the writeup was
something like “The kids are doing something good, we should encourage
them. After a few days the person from Autodesk, Banglore who had cone for
a demo also mentioned it. Many of us were so impressed about the search
results of google that we used to open “yahoo” just for jumping to google.
Yahoo guys must not be knowing that the baby on their lap will grow to the
giant it is today.
I, and many like me didn’t use Windos Vista even for a few moths. Windows
7 neither left a footprint comparable to XP.
I am not aware of exact figures, but the number of unauthorized copies of
Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows, as well as earlier versions of
Microsoft Office must be mind boggling. guess starting from Windows 7,
through Windows 8, Windows 10, it is almost impossible to use pirated
versions for a long period. I have myself decided that I will not use any
pirated version of any software hereafter.
And now, for programmers, community versions of Visual Studio are like a
fresh and soothing breeze. We can use them to develop all sort of modern
applications. Apart from this many giant corporations like AutoDesk, Adobe
are now allowing users to use their suits on subscription basis.
I remember, in India, audio cassettes of bigger established players like HMV
were available at a price starting somewhere from Rs. 200. And pirated were
available at around Rs. 50. Bigger players came together for fighting piracy
and within a night, they dramatically reduced the price below or equal to the
pirated counterparts. I will make an humble request to software giants to
follow the same lines.