Microsoft eXtreme - Volume 2: Spring 1998

Video Description

TAPE 2/5 This segment starts with Bill Gates welcoming the audience to the show and acknowledging the feedback towards testing Windows 98, shown later in the episode. We're reintroduced to Suzi who meets up with Steve Masters to demonstrate Auto PC, powered by Windows CE, showing the navigation system accompanied by a familiar text-to-speech voice. Also demonstrated is an email conveniently sent by Bill Gates asking the two to show an example of a third-party application, and the phone dialing system built-in - things which lots of people these days take for granted with systems like IntelliLink, though in 1998, was more of a novelty for those who could afford to have it installed. Suzi then heads inside the building to help demonstrate the Palm PC running Windows CE with Pamela Goldschmidt, followed by an appearance from Nathan Myhrvold, now former CTO of the company, through a short testimonial video discussing the challenges about keeping up with the everchanging landscape of technology. After that, several other consumer applications are previewed at the event, including Outlook 98 (and an immersion breaker near the 30-minute mark when the audience is revealed for the first time applauding), Publisher 98, and Money 98 in order. Before long, a fast-paced promotional video for Windows 98 is displayed to the audience, which can also be found on several rental video tapes from the time (I happened to find one such copy on a Lethal Weapon 4 tape). However, this version of the promo is slightly different from the commonly circulated copy online, as the "Watch DVD Movies" text isn't present in this state. This version was also shown in another, much longer promotional ad for Windows products, shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6veXwhlhsg Two guys wearing Windows 98 shirts, Dave Pollon for the Windows 98 Team, and BJ Whalen commemorating the lesser-known Windows 98 Marketing Day, are then brought up to demonstrate the operating system in question. A glimpse of the website pertaining to it is also shown, with all of the images and animated GIFs intact (the captures on Internet Archive lack most of these). Some interesting files in My Documents like a TIF of the Windows 98 box and a slide planning the launch event are also shown. WaveTop, another Internet-based component, is also given a brief demo featuring a wide array of news sources. The new HyperHelp system (replacing the legacy help from 95/NT 4.0), rare footage of the early Update Wizard, and the built-in System File Checker are also given their own respective chapters before long. I have quite a bit to say about one of their statements for the FAT32 converter, though. As you would probably know, Windows 95 OSR2 (MS-DOS 7.1) was the first version to support the FAT32 filesystem. During early development of Memphis prior to Beta 1, a version of the FAT32 converter was introduced with a UI more reminiscent of the standard 95 wizards. BJ Whalen comments about how OEMs chose to continue shipping Windows 95 OSR2 while still using the older FAT16 filesystem. He also claims that there was no way to convert the filesystem under OSR2 to FAT32 otherwise. Do keep in mind that OSR2 was exclusively distributed towards OEMs for them to preload on their machines, while new boxes sold at retail stores still carried the original release of Windows 95 (some of which later came bundled with IE4) which didn't support the new filesystem. As someone who has studied the structure of Windows 9x for the longest time along with knowing someone else who is also specialized in it, I'd have to call propaganda on BJ's part, since we discovered that files spanning numerous builds of 9x are easily interchangeable with one another, including an early version of the FAT32 converter which, with some porting of newer system files over to 95 (the project later evolved into Windows 95D), it was able to run just as well as it could under Memphis. And because only the initial release of 95 was available towards consumers, it effectively gave them the opportunity to sell Windows 98 framing it as if it introduced these new features, all while subsequently shoveling lots of other unnecessary junk on the CD that in some cases isn't made optional during installation. Moving past the dishonest claims they make, a short documentary of the daily test cycle for 98 is also displayed in this segment, as well as a comparison between 95 and 98 at the speed of launching Photoshop 4.0 (I have reason to believe they sabotaged the 95 demo with IE4 to make it seem slower than it actually is), dual monitor support, Flight Simulator 98, a video game called G-Police with 3dfx cards at play, a live demo of WebTV for Windows showing various TV channels from April 4, 1998 just before afternoon, the DVD Player included with the OS, VidCap, and a demo of various USB devices (this predates the infamous COMDEX demo). The last things they show off is desktop themes from Plus! 98 and the CD Deluxe player.