Steve Ballmer tells the Microsoft Build conference that there have been 4 million upgrades sold

Ballmer likened the launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 to other momentous times in the history of the personal computer, such as the launch of the IBM PC and the launch of Windows 95, which "was really brought computing into the mainstream and opened up the Internet."

Oh I can't stand his daily Windows 95 comparisons.

Windows 8 is the anti-95.
Win32 programs didn't gave you the feeling that something is amiss compared to Win 3.1 applications. (with Metro you have this feeling constantly). Even the first generation Win95 programs at launch felt more capable than their 3.1 precursors (Corel Draw 6, Office 95). Notro provides the complete opposite feeling.

Windows 95 came with uncrippled winfile.exe and progman.exe (the win 3.1 GUI), and you were able to boot directly into it without even seeing 95's explorer.exe at all ("shell=progman.exe" in system.ini). (works in win 98 too) There was even an official option at the Windows 95 setup for that if you upgraded from Win3.1.

You also were able to directly boot into DOS with ease (just set bootgui=0 in msdos.sys, that also worked in Win 98).

Windows 95 is the anti-thesis to Windows 8. The philosphies were completely different. The team had enough courage to provide all these options because it truly seemed as if they were proud and confident about the system to stand on its own. Windows 8 on the other hand comes across as coward's darling - "the users are too stupid to appreciate our beautiful hippster GUI, let's cripple the desktop as much as we can to force them to this". Windows 95 didn't need any crippling, users chosed explorer.exe because it was better, and they had the ability to use the old GUI without compromise If they wished to do so.

Windows 95 is confidence. Windows 8 is cowardice.

Oh, and the four million sales?

Windows 95 sold one million copies within four days. Sure, three million less than 8, but consider the fact that back then far fewer PCs and laptops existed, computers were still a somewhat geeky topic, also there was only the retail channel, no online sales, AND Windows 8 is the cheapest Windows yet.

Considering all this..

Oh, and the admins don't need to bother to ban or lock. Now that Win 8 is released as it is, there's no point in complaining anymore. I will take a rest regarding this topic.

17 hours ago, wkempf wrote

Not done trolling yet?

I saw it more as a discussion point.