Thanks to Alex Khristov for uploading and sending this through. It pretty much speaks for itself.
As this video clearly illustrates, 1998 was a great year for fancy marketing videos. Screen tearing (as seen at 0:30sec) seems to be very much a positive visual effect. Copying system files was also a hot feature back in 1998, as well as over-scaled 16×16px 256-colored icons. Clippy even makes several guest appearances.
If someone could please explain the connection between Barney The Purple Dinosaur and Microsoft Windows 98 seen at 0:44sec, that would be greatly appreciated.
Maybe one day we’ll look back at videos with spinning laptops with laughter too.
The Barney in the video is an Actimate. These were toys that could interact with TV and computers using Microsoft technology. Now discontinued.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actimates
Microsoft should totally get back into the dolls and toys business.
They do have a robot SDK out… that’s a step in the right direction.
“Hello, I am Microsoft Sam/Mary.”
Barney is great. you can give him order from your computer ( Windows 98). I made a video with the Barney of my manager here :
http://benjamingauthey.com/PermaLink,guid,a649a19e-7825-4d3f-84f7-8a36 160f88a1.aspx
The Barney in the video is an Actimate as Jesse C said earlier. If you ever visit the Microsoft Redmond campus there is a visitor center and there is a display of the history of Microsoft and I think there is a small Actimate discription along with the product (or box) well or something about it.
In the future, we’ll probably think that square keys are stupid.