I wish we didn’t have to run emulators but it’s a no-brainer to chose running an emulator versus replacing millions of dollars of equipment dispersed throughout entire regions.
Its not the emulators, its Windows 95 thats the question. Hell run Win XP in an emulator, but 95?
I think we even have 8-bit hardware out there.
Mostly for nostalgia... But, how can you appreciate where we are now if you do not have a real understanding of where we have been? But your attitude is typical of our throw away society. I personally enjoy working with old things. I have been restoring a house built in 1900 for years and am working on restoring a very rare 1942 Cadillac. They made them only until February of 1942 before switching toward production.
But there are major differences between Windows 95 and Windows XP that are important for certain hardware and software. Windows 95 ran on top of DOS 7. It was a hybrid 16/32 bit OS that used 16-bit DOS 7 as a bootloader for a 32-bit operating environment. It could use 16 bit device drivers.
Windows XP comes in 32 bit and 64 bit flavors. It is not actually built on top of DOS. A lot of but not all of Windows 95 and DOS applications will run on it in compatibility mode, but of course most Windows 95 hardware will not.
I actually do not completely understand the complaints about Windows 95 but I was a computer enthusiast from an earlier time period. Many others first real exposure to computers was with Windows 95 and there was a bit of a learning curve and “plug and play” was a new concept at that time. Microsoft's first attempts were obviously plagued with a few issues.