A Quora question I just had to share

I wrote an answer to a question on Quora that stroked my nostalgia, and fed my early to mid 90's geek.

I had so much fun writing the answer I just wanted to share it here.

In 1995 when Windows 95 came out, I was already a computer repair technician for ectra tech computers and then for sears, and had already started my own company, Denny's Computers.

It feels so dated now, but when Windows 95 first showed up, it was so much sleeker and sharper looking than Windows 3.11 that I was ecstatic. (It was a nightmare, but that I would learn in the coming months, thank goodness for Windows 98 SE.)..

Anyways, here was the question, and my answer. It really gives you a window into just how insanely much the computer industry has changed in 23 years:

How slowly would Windows 10 run on a typical Windows 95 machine, if you could get it running?

Dennis Gutowski, Owner/Operator at Denny's Computers (1993-present)

Answered 12m ago

If by some magical powers you got it to run, I would assume very slowly.

There is NO way to do so in reality though. Windows 95 machines are similar to Windows 10 machines only in the fact that they both can compute.

The architecture has changes so rapidly, and in so many ways that this is not a real world question.

Windows 95 machines were mostly 486’s with megahertz of processing power, not gigahertz like nowadays.

Here is the original needed specs for running Windows 95:

Personal computer with a 386DX or higher processor (486 recommended)

• I usually preferred the 486dx model, which had 20, 25 33 and 50 MHz (megahertz) ranges. Today’s average machine runs between 1500 and 3900 mhz, per core. quite often having more than 4 cores, roughly 4 3900 mhz computers in one.

4 megabytes (MB) of memory (8 MB recommended)

• most computers these days run between 4000 mb and 16000 mb.

Typical hard disk space required to upgrade to Windows 95: 35-40 MB The actual requirement varies depending on the features you choose to install.

*most hard disks run between 500,000 mb and 5,000,000 mb. These numbers are so large we call them gigabytes and terabytes.

Typical hard disk space required to install Windows 95 on a clean system: 50-55 MB The actual requirement varies depending on the features you choose to install

• I am currently running Kubuntu 18.04 LTS 64 bit edition. It’s complete footprint after installation is somewhere around 12 Gigabytes, or 12000 mb. And that’s just the operating system, no extra goodies.

One 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk drive

• a 3.5 inch high density floppy drive could store roughly 1.44mb of storage. Kubuntu’s ISO, which is what i used to install kubuntu, is 1800 mb, or 1,250 3.5″ floppies.

VGA or higher resolution (256-color SVGA recommended)

I hope I made my point.. the cellphone I have in my pocket is several hundred thousand times faster and more powerful in any way than a 486dx. And a modern cheap laptop from Walmart.com is by far more powerful than my cellphone.

It’s a neat thought experiment though, and it gave me a lot of nostalgia to think back on those days, because that’s when I was a wet behind the ears computer tech, so thank you for this question! :)