Uncovering the secrets of Save As, debunking Y2K and bragging about Internet Explorer—take a trip to the Windows 98 webpage

HardwareUncovering the secrets of Save As, debunking Y2K and bragging about Internet Explorer—take a trip to the Windows 98 webpageWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Microsoft)

Screenshots from the Microsoft Windows 98 website accessed through the

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor(Image credit: Future)This month I’ve been:testing the latest and greatestROG Zephyrus G14. I’ve been thoroughly impressed with this compact machine, awarding it my pick as thebest 14-inch gaming laptop.Next up:I’ll be checking out two brand new SSDs and running them through our benchmarking suite. Stay tuned.

Jacob Ridley, Senior Hardware Editor

(Image credit: Future)This month I’ve been:testing the latest and greatestROG Zephyrus G14. I’ve been thoroughly impressed with this compact machine, awarding it my pick as thebest 14-inch gaming laptop.Next up:I’ll be checking out two brand new SSDs and running them through our benchmarking suite. Stay tuned.

(Image credit: Future)

Jacob Ridley portrait on a blue background

This month I’ve been:testing the latest and greatestROG Zephyrus G14. I’ve been thoroughly impressed with this compact machine, awarding it my pick as thebest 14-inch gaming laptop.

Next up:I’ll be checking out two brand new SSDs and running them through our benchmarking suite. Stay tuned.

The internet used to be a simpler place. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at thesite built for Windows 98. A simple menu offers access to a few key pages of information for any would-be Windows user: “cool things” coming to Windows 98, why you shouldn’t worry about Y2K, and how to uncover the secrets of the ‘Save As’ dialog box.

Another page offers advice on downloading the “world’s fastest modern browser”. Yes, Internet Explorer 5. What did you think I was going to say?

“Internet Explorer 5 not only displays Web pages faster, it’s designed to save you time on the things you do most often,” according to Microsoft. You can either download IE5 directly from the MS website or “order it on CD!”

“It’s never been easier to get online, find the information you need, and just do stuff faster.”

Microsoft has also put together a handy guide onhow to add an address bar for browsing the web to your taskbar. That’s something the company is nowadays keen to force upon users and reticent to let anyone remove. Though Microsoft wins back some brownie points for having a menu item simply titled “having fun”. Aww.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Screenshots from the Microsoft Windows 98 website accessed through the

If you were alive at the time you’ll remember that this operating system came out just before doomsday. Or at least the day when a surprising number of people thought a digital doomsday would occur. Y2K, or the Millennium Bug as it was commonly known, was the proposed day when all computers would catastrophically fail due to getting the dates mixed up. Nowadays it’s all hackers breaking into hospitals and schools and holding their data ransom—the late nineties were simpler times with your computer forgetting which day it was and airplanes falling out of the sky. Supposedly, anyways, nothing major actually happened—obviously.

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In an article on the Windows 98 website,Microsoft’s Gordon Blacksaid prior to Y2K: “Maybe you have received an e-mail message warning that the Microsoft Windows operating system running on your computer will fail on January 1, 2000 unless you take certain action. The pessimistic e-mail message predicts that Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT operating systems will crash when the clock ticks past midnight on December 31, 1999.

The scourge of unsolicited email chains at a time when people actually believed what they read on the internet. Ah, damn, that’s still a thing?

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Screenshots from the Microsoft Windows 98 website accessed through the

Black goes on to say: “the rumor circulating on the Internet, suggesting users have to reset ‘regional settings’ inside the Windows Control Panel is just plain wrong.”

If that wasn’t reassuring enough, just call Microsoft at (425) 635-7222 and they’ll help you out. At least between 5:00 a.m.- 9:00 p.m. God bless those Windows support engineers waking up at the crack of dawn to help run through how to restore their Word file they just accidentally closed and now it’s “gone forever” (minimised to the Taskbar).

Revisiting the Windows 98 website has highlighted something very important to me, however. Not only the power of light-hearted features on a major corporation’s website in the nineties, but the tool that makes it all possible, theWayback Machine.

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