On the night of August 24, the normally closed CompUSA store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue was brightly lit.
The store was packed with customers, some lining up even blocks away, and several long lines in the shopping mall hall moved slowly forward.
They weren't scrambling for records, sneakers, or a celebrity's autograph.
Indeed, these people were all scrambling to buy Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 95!
Many customers, upon securing their boxes, proudly displayed their trophies to the cameras.
A young man wearing a headscarf held up two copies of the system disks, laughing heartily.
Such scenes were not confined to Manhattan but occurred in department stores around the world.
$210 was not a small amount at the time, but that did not deter people's enthusiasm for Windows 95.
The New York Times described the launch as "the most spectacular, craziest, and most expensive product launch in the history of the computer industry."
