What Everybody Got Wrong About Windows 98

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One of the downsides to doing something incredible is that it can often be pretty difficult to live up to. The bar is now so high, and if you want to continue that level of success, it’s going to have to get higher and higher going forward, and you need to be ready for that. And you could very well say that this was a problem for Microsoft when they released Windows 98 back in…well…1998. Upon its launch, the OS did receive praise from the public. It not only introduced some great features we still take for granted in Windows today, but it was built around facilitating the use of a domain that was now rapidly growing in popularity: the internet. But that’s not to say that things were all perfect. In fact, the OS faced many challenges during its development that would somewhat affect its public appearance building up to its release, and some of these problems even persisted among users following its launch, and this all coincided with the growing legal troubles that Microsoft was facing at the time. Needless to say, things were a bit turbulent, and that was indirectly reflected in the OS’s design.

Now, this is not to say that Windows 98 was bad or poorly made, but if you were an average Joe back in the 1990s who was already doing just fine browsing the net with Windows 95, you may not exactly have seen a reason to upgrade. In fact, John Montgomery of Byte Magazine stated exactly that in June of 1998, claiming that the new OS “[offered] little, except support for some new hardware that really [wasn’t] making a big impact on corporations yet.” And it is with this distinction that Windows 98 was seen, more or less, by the public as just a rerelease of Windows 95. The two versions even looked identical, so to the superficial eye, things really just looked more of the same. But I believe that Windows 98 was much more than that, and despite its flaws and not particularly exciting features at face value, its development serves an integral role in Microsoft’s story as well as demonstrates a lot of growth that occurred within the company, and that is just something that cannot be ignored.

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[nationsquid]

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[AvatarNeo]

If Windows 98 had anything going for it, it had an amazing startup sound.

[unprkbo]

The thing I remembered the most about Windows 98 was the built-in themes. They all have unique color scheme, wallpaper, screen saver, mouse cursor, icon set, even sounds.

Changing the theme now and then makes the experience fresh, something I really missed ever since Vista. Yes we still had themes but they're very limited: no unique icon sets or mouse cursors, screensavers are a story of the past, they even removed the ability to customize color scheme since Windows 10. Almost every Windows computer nowadays has the same boring look, that's just sad.

[tarajoe]

The fact that much of the retro computing community skips 95 and uses 98, shows how good 98 was.

[jhonwask]

Windows 98 was my favourite OS from Microsoft. It retained DOS. It had that modern, esy to see look. It was easy to repair. PNP actually worked quite well; most PNP problems were video cards and scanners. IE was great, better than NS and prettier, too. It truly was an amazing OS.

[mrgeebers]

I think Windows 98 had room to grow especially when the room was finally filled up in the second edition in 1999

[jasminderventa]

It's interesting that you've shown the entire clips for Windows 98 in 16 colors, which makes it look a lot more like Windows 95 visually, and in fact when 16 or 32 bit colors are selected, it looks a lot nicer visually than Windows 95, but anyways.
Nice video :)

[RiasatSalminSami]

Used Windows 98 from 1999-2006.

I really love how customizable the classic UI was. Still more fun than the current windows 8, 10, 11 UI. The start up screen and the windows logo itself also looked much more artistic.

[neoasura]

I loved how simple, clean, and fast Windows 98 was. I would still use it to this day if it was compatibale with modern day devices and programs.

[MrReese]

I used Win98 SE until 2007 when I switched to XP :D. The biggest problems with 98 were the lack of proper memory management, the eventually very low actually addressable memory (max. 512 MB as far as I remember), and the lack of a proper, powerful task manager.

[DacLMK]

Windows 98 was the first Windows I've used. I was born in 1999, and my aunt got her first computer in 2000 that came with Windows 98. I started to use it later (don't remember when, but probably around 2002 or 2003), and I just loved it. Used to draw a lot in MS Paint and play games. She eventually installed XP on it, but XP was running slow, so she reverted back to 98. I used that computer whenever I went to visit her up until 2005 when she got a new computer from her workplace. Good times.

[videowarehouse]

You didn't mention the fact that you could enter a web site into the File Explorer address bar and the site would load. This was a groundbreaking thing for Windows 98 which then was cancelled due to the lawsuit (if you did this, a separate instance of IE would load). This functionality still exists today btw - your default browser will load with the site you type in. Multi-monitor was great. I upgraded to XP when it came out, but due to my computer specs being pretty basic by the standards of the day, I went back to 98SE for a couple years until I could afford a new computer with a beefier processor and more RAM.

[edmundwoolliams]

Windows 98 was the first computer I had at home as a kid. I remember whenever anything went wrong it would go into MS-DOS mode, which was like this scary, mysterious beast living in the computer's underworld that was confusing. The best part was when I was stuck on the MS-DOS menus, my older brother would then say: "Quit DOSsing around!"

Although I hardly even used it, MS-DOS gives me some huge nostalgia for some reason. It's like older computers had this cranky nuts-and-bolts feature that you'd sometimes be involuntarily exposed to, but are shielded from in modern OSs (unless you specifically look for it). This has recently motivated me to learn Command Prompt and other programming to understand all that stuff I saw and never understood as a kid.

Thank you Windows 98 for being a delicate combination of user-friendly enough to get me interested in using computers as a kid, but also being based off of MS-DOS, which left some weird nostalgic imprint on me. It has a special place in my heart.

[jmal]

Windows 98 was my gateway into the world of computers and it will always hold a special place in my heart. Every computer that I personally own has a virtual machine with Windows 98 on it for when I want to take a trip back to 1998.

[Raveheart]

Although my first ever used Windows was 3.11, it was 98 when everything really took off for me. My first steps on the internet, downloading MP3s, burning CDs, creating my first homepage, Unreal Tournament LAN-Parties, Online Chatrooms, ICQ Era... Everything started on a Win98 machine so for me it will always remain something special.

[jtwc]

Another great video by NationSquid. I remember using Windows 98 for a time as a kid before upgrading to Windows 2000, and eventually XP in 2007

[lovelesstv]

appreciate this video. i'm 38, remember using win95/98se at home. playing quake3 with 150ms ping(dial up!) and the way menus looked. remembering the transition from dos to win3.1 to this. quite the trip down memory lane, thanks!

[jennalblackmore]

Great video! Thank you for mentioning that the Windows Explorer address bar can be edited without clicking folders, I wasn't aware that was something a person could do!

[anenglishmanplusamerican]

I became familiar with computers through the iconic startup sound of Windows 98. Being blind and visually impaired, that particular sound captured my attention and made me realize the coolness of technology. I was born in ’99, which makes me quite proud to be a part of the final chapter of the 20th century.

[panqueque]

Oh I remember "plug and play". Most of the time it didn't work. You would plug something in to your computer and absolutely nothing would happen. You still had to manually install the drivers yourself. I remember having to tell the computer which parallel port to check to find the device at one point. True plug an play came around with XP.