On: Living Like It's 99: No Social Media, No Smartphon...

[Lex-2008]

Video calls? Skype initial release was in 2003. Consumer OS with server-grade kernel? Windows XP first release was in 2008. USB thumb drives? Windows 98 didn't have drivers for them, so they came bundles with CD with drivers? Web browsers? Firefox initial release was in 2002, much hated IE6 - in 2001. In 90s you had IE5 - I doubt it was much better than IE6.

[Lammy → Lex-2008]

Skype's big innovation was its ability to work in NAT-to-NAT situations, not anything to do with its actual calling functionality. People were video chatting even way back in the mid '90s: https://www.sattlers.org/mickey/CU-SeeMe/internetTVwithCUSee...

[Dracophoenix → Lex-2008]

>>Video calls? Skype initial release was in 2003.

The first commercial software application for point-to-point video calls is CUSeeme and it was released in 1992.

The first concert to be live-streamed over the Internet was in 1993. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone

[bitbiter → Lex-2008]

> Video calls?

Microsoft NetMeeting[0] was released in 1996 and actually included with Windows 95 through Vista

> USB thumb drives? Windows 98 didn't have drivers for them, so they came bundles with CD with drivers?

Zip drives and/or CD-RW were pretty widespread by then, filling a similar role

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_NetMeeting

[thesuitonym → Lex-2008]

The web made for IE5/Netscape 4 was much better than the current mess we have now. Websites were designed for the people reading them, rather than for analytics.

[hundchenkatze → Lex-2008]

> Windows XP first release was in 2008

Not the 90s, but XP was released in 2001.

[Lex-2008 → hundchenkatze]

Thanks! I looked at a wrong release date on wiki ("Final release", which is actually Service Pack 3)

[fulafel → Lex-2008]

Trivia: AT&T consumer Picturephone service launched in 1970. https://ethw.org/Picturephone

[LargoLasskhyfv → Lex-2008]

Pffft! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotelephony#/media/File:Bil...

1997, under 1000,- Deutsche Mark. A pair for 1798,- DM Oh, and ISDN of course ;-)

[sovsovsod → Lex-2008]

There was Windows NT 4 which was awesome, released in 1996, and Windows 2000, released in 1999.

As a kid I used both of those. NT 4 was a bit hard to use since most programs (read games) were written for DOS or win95/98.

But Windows 2000 was awesome. It was like having winXp a couple years early

[Lex-2008 → sovsovsod]

Yes, I deliberately tried to exclude the NT family by mentioning "consumer OS" :) BTW, how was Windows 2000 in terms of software (read games) compatibility?

[sovsovsod → Lex-2008]

“ to exclude the NT family by mentioning "consumer OS" ”

Sorry missed that.

Games: I wasn’t much of a gamer by then. But Age of empires worked well :D

[cromulent → Lex-2008]

IE6 was a great browser when released, the problem was that IE7 wasn’t released for another 5 years, a lifetime in those days.