WINDOWS 95 MANIA : Opening Day : Windows 95 Gets a Bright, if Not Blinding, Beginning
With searchlights spraying columns of light across the midnight sky, the parking lot at CompUSA in Fountain Valley took on the feel of a Hollywood movie premiere.
But the stars at this gala came in boxes: Windows 95, the widely anticipated Microsoft Corp. personal computer program, had finally arrived.
At countless computer stores around Southern California and the world, nocturnal parties, big crowds and special promotions ushered in the release of the new computer program, which helps computer users move from one task to the next with the click of a mouse.
Though fun seemed to be had by all at the retailers’ sales festivals--and at the VIP gala on the Microsoft campus outside Seattle--there were some signs Thursday that Windows 95 might not be living up to the prodigious hype.
But as the clock struck midnight Wednesday, Windows 95 began flying off the shelves. At CompUSA in Fountain Valley, a crowd of 300 was on hand for the event. Outside, employees handed out slices of the 40 pizzas the store had ordered for the occasion.
Inside, a radio disc jockey kept customers updated on the evening’s sales promotions. When the zero hour arrived, the crowd tossed streamers and tooted horns as store employees flung open the doors to the warehouse, where boxes of software were stacked six-feet high on wooden pallets.
Bobby Neishi, 37, a Huntington Beach resident who designs snowboards, was among the first to grab a copy. Neishi said he and his friends were holding an informal contest to see who could get a copy of the program first.
“I usually go to sleep at 10 o’clock, but tonight I set my alarm for 11 p.m.,” he said. “I’m going to go home and load this thing up and get on the [Internet] and talk about it.”
The crowd included many techies who looked, well, a bit like Microsoft founder Bill Gates himself: hair combed forward, wire-rimmed spectacles and loose-fitting clothes. Some even had pocket protectors.
One of just a few dozen women who turned out for the event was Mary Freel, 48, of Westminster. Like many in the crowd, she had been waiting for Windows 95 for more than a year. “My hard drive went down on Tuesday,” she said. “I called the manufacturer and said, ‘You’ve got to fix this, Thursday is coming.”’ She had a new drive by Wednesday morning.
The appeal of Windows 95 is that “it’s supposed to make things easier,” she said, though even she admitted she was stunned by the turnout. “When color TVs first came out, you didn’t see things like this,” she said. “The only thing that would come close is if they found the fountain of youth.”
Though computer software stores had been preparing for the Windows onslaught for weeks, many retailers found themselves overwhelmed by a crush of customers.
“Last night we did a normal day’s business in two hours,” said Bob Stone, manager of a Computer City store in Santa Ana. At midday Thursday, business was still 40% above normal for a weekday. But the real rush is expected for the weekend.
“We’ve actually hired about 20 more employees over the last couple of weeks to be staffed for this,” Stone said.
The big retail chains declined to discuss sales figures, but a disappointing turnout at a handful of stores in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area suggested the Windows 95 launch may not be an unqualified success.
Maria Rubio, manager of the Software Etc. store in the Century City Shopping Center, opened up two hours early and nearly doubled her staff to accommodate the heavy influx of customers she was expecting. Although the first Windows 95 sale was made by 8:15 a.m., the customers only trickled in throughout the morning.
“I was surprised that we weren’t as busy as we might have been,” Rubio said. Even the mob she expected at lunch hour failed to materialize.
The Computer City store in Los Angeles opened its doors at 8 a.m. but failed to draw large crowds all morning.
“I thought it would be jampacked and that I would be waiting in line,” said Brian Shuster, a 37-year-old film company executive from Beverly Hills, as he breezed through the store with two packages of the operating system.
Marcos Genetiano, a clerk at CompUSA in San Bruno, said the initial rush had slowed drastically. “It’s not really that busy right now,” he said. “It was better today than usual, but not what we expected.”
Certainly none of these complaints dampened the circus atmosphere at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters Thursday.
The main athletic field on the lush 250-acre campus had been converted into a carnival complete with tents and a Ferris wheel. By 9 a.m., buses began depositing visitors--the press and computer industry types who would eventually number some 5,000.
Many arrived bleary eyed, casualties of the festivities of the night before. At a welcome reception hosted by Microsoft, guests who packed into a ballroom at the Stouffer’s Hotel in downtown Seattle were greeted by a giant ice sculpture in the shape of the Windows logo. Later, Microsoft developers held the “Geekfest” in a spare auditorium on the edge of town, a hip gathering with funky ‘70s music and a pizza-eating contest, the food of choice for computer programmers.
At 11 a.m., comedian Jay Leno took the stage in the main tent, but Bill Gates, whom Leno introduced as “the man who’s so successful he has Ross Perot as his chauffeur,” was the real star of the show.
Visitors spent the afternoon nibbling on “Compaq kebabs” and playing carnival games in which computer gear were prizes.
“This is like the Cannes Film Festival,” said Mal Ransom, marketing vice president for Packard Bell. “This is the industry celebrating itself.”
Even Seattle’s notoriously fickle weather cooperated. The sky was an azure blue dotted by fluffy white clouds, just like the opening screen for Windows 95.
The only sour note in the day was a statement from Atty. Gen. Janet Reno saying that the Justice Department’s investigation of antitrust violations by Microsoft would continue, as expected. Her comments caused a flutter in Microsoft’s stock price, which dipped $1.75 to close at $96.125.
But sales volumes, not stock prices, are what retailers care about, and most saw a steady stream of customers Thursday. At Egghead Software in Lake Forest, a small outlet with just two cash registers, 35 people were lined up outside the store’s doors when they were opened at midnight.
By 1 a.m., “We had a line about 50 or 60 feet long of people waiting to get through the cash registers,” said Phil Andrews, store manager. The hectic pace continued through the next day. “My feeling is it’s going to be busy for another couple of weeks,” he said.
At CompUSA in Fountain Valley, the crowd began to thin out after 1 a.m., and Kelly Koger, the 27-year-old retail manager at the store, stepped outside to catch his breath and wipe away beads of sweat dripping down his forehead.
“I was looking for maybe 100 to 120 people,” he said. “This really blows me away.”
To handle the crush of sales, 30 employees were working the midnight-to-1:30 a.m. shift, double the normal weeknight staff, and Koger himself said he had been working since 8 a.m. the previous day.
“We’ll probably get out of here at about 3 a.m.,” he said. “I’m going straight home to go to bed.” Asked whether he would grab a copy of Windows 95 for himself and install it in the pre-dawn hours Thursday, he chuckled and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I own a Macintosh.”
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Times staff writers Julie Pitta and Nicholas Riccardi, and correspondent Karen Kaplan contributed to this article.
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Hype or Help?
THE GOOD
* 32-bit architecture: Takes advantage of advanced microchips, potentially performing twice as fast as earlier Windows with 16-bit design.
* Start button: An icon in the lower left corner of the screen provides a common place to open a file, launch a program or get help.
* Task bar: A strip at the bottom of the screen shows what programs are running and allows the user to switch back and forth.
* Multitasking: Can run several programs at once.
* File names: Current Windows programs are limited to eight characters; new ones allow 255.
THE BAD
* Power demands: To run well, Windows 95 requires a PC with at least a 486 microprocessor, 16 megabytes of RAM and a 500-megabyte hard-disk drive, about twice the power of most PCs. That translates to $800 to $1,200 in hardware improvements for a user whose computer is more than a year old, according to Paul Gillen, editor of Computerworld.
* Multitasking: Doesn’t work well with older programs and can lock up the computer.
* Learning curve: Those who are already comfortable with Windows and DOS will have to relearn their computers.
* Mac envy: Still not as easy to use as a Macintosh.
THE UGLY
* Too much hype: A $1-billion sales pitch? Give us a break.
* Too much Gates: Is Microsoft selling a man or a program?
Sources: Bloomberg Business News, Associated Press
