Looking Back: Microsoft Office 95

I’ll start a series of posts looking back at Microsoft’s glorious products in history.

Legacy applications still shining

Microsoft Office 95

Released in 1995, refreshed by Office 97, replaced by Office 2000.

I tried installing it in a virtual machine, and it surprisingly installed well and worked as expected.

Short introduction by wiki.

Microsoft Office 95 was released in August 1995. The version numbers were altered to create parity across the suite- every program was called version 7.0 meaning all but Word missed out versions. It was designed as a fully 32-bit version to match Windows 95. Office 95 was available in two versions, Office 95 Standard and Office 95 Professional. The standard version consisted of Word 7.0, Excel 7.0, PowerPoint 7.0, and Schedule+ 7.0. The professional edition contained all of the items in the standard version plus Access 7.0. If the professional version was purchased in CD-ROM form, it also included Bookshelf.

It’s amazing an application suite this old can still work on Windows XP, thus making it possible to run through XP Mode under Windows 7. Won’t that be an interesting combination? 1995 application software running inside 2009 operating system.

I’d say Office had been a very impressive suite since the beginning.

I just got the leaked Beta 2 version of the next Office, version 2010, and it works superb fast! Really expecting the RTM of Office 2010.