[Arthalion]

Oh, I also have to mention this:

The original published minimum requirements for Windows 95 were a 386 DX20, 4MB of RAM, DOS 3.2, 1X CDROM, and 70MB of HDD space. One day some friends and I got bored in my garage and BUILT a 386 DX20 with 4MB of RAM (SIPP's no less), a 1X CDROM, DOS 5, and a 250MB IDE hard drive.

It took 18 hours to install the operating system onto the computer and boot it for the first time. After the installation was completed, total boot time for the system, from power button to Start button, was about 20 minutes. When you moved your mouse to the start button and clicked it, it would typically take 1-3 minutes for the start menu to draw onto the screen.

It's largely forgotten today, but at the time the minimum requirements for Win95 were considered to be one of the most egregious marketing lies in computer history. When I mentioned this to a former MS developer years later, he was amazed that we'd gotten it to install at all...apparently MS itself had only managed to get the configuration to function a handful of times, and most installations resulted in a crash or freeze.

[sine_nomine]

Isn't that true of all MS minimum requirements? Even today?

[Disambiguator]

There are "minimum" requirements and then there are "recommended" configurations. The minimum was usually barely enough to install the OS, and maybe play Solitaire.

I had a recent experience with a machine running a specialized application. The guy who sourced the machine bought it because it met the "minimum" requirements for the application. It kept crashing until we tripled the amount of RAM on the thing, and suddenly all the problems went away.

[laotzu]

bump for later reference