Overview
- Microsoft launched Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, and the OS sold roughly seven million copies in its first seven weeks, driven by an unusually theatrical marketing push.
- The release introduced key user-facing changes such as the Start menu, taskbar, Plug-and-Play hardware support, and preemptive multitasking that changed how people used desktop PCs.
- Microsoft staged midnight sales, flew in Jay Leno for a Redmond campus event, bought high-profile press placements, and reportedly paid millions to license the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” for ads.
- Retail Windows 95 CDs included unrelated entertainment—music videos, a film trailer, cartoons and games—an effort engineer Raymond Chen says was chosen ‘because it was fun,’ and that required formal rights clearances such as deals with Geffen Records for the Weezer video.
- The combined product and marketing strategy forced PC makers to include sound cards and CD-ROM drives as standard, which helped turn personal computers into ready-made multimedia and gaming machines and shaped expectations for consumer PCs for years.