Windows 95 Takes Center Stage Promotional Blitz Fuels Buying Spree For New Software

Their long wait over, computer owners Thursday bought and booted up Windows 95 in a remarkable demonstration of how familiar high-technology products have become to American consumers.

Amid a marketing blitz from developer Microsoft Corp. and extended hours and promotions at stores around the country, buying seemed frenetic in some places for the highly touted upgrade of the program that runs most personal computers.

“I’m looking for something that’s going to scream,” said Bobbie Bogue, who spent about $600 on Windows 95 and new programs that run with it at a store in Campbell, Calif.

But elsewhere, sales were fairly normal for a summer weekday, in contrast to the exhaustive promotion concocted by Microsoft.

“We haven’t had as much traffic as we thought,” said Vic Glassley, operations manager at Connecting Point Computer Center in Spokane. “A lot of people are taking a waitand-see approach, but judging from the number of calls we’ve gotten, we’ll be selling a lot more in the next few weeks.”

While Windows 95 will eventually become the standard for running IBM-compatible personal computers, the initial sales results presented an unclear picture for how long that will take.

The day culminated four years of development and months of marketing and media hype for Microsoft, which came to dominate high technology after the last major update to Windows, in 1990, became a success.

It also showed how comfortable computing has become for many.

Though still in just one in three homes, PCs have become common in most offices and many public places, like the library, drivers’ license bureau or even a greeting card store.

And jargon like hard drive, e-mail, RAM and megabytes can be heard in parks, coffee shops and even conversations between grandparents and grandchildren.

No company has previously been able to drive a huge number of people to buy a computer operating system, the arcane program that runs the basic functions of a computer.

R.C. Arroyo and a co-worker went to an Office Depot store in Denver just to look it over. “As soon as we saw the box, we decided we had to have it,” he said.

Arron Eicholz, a 19-year-old in Enumclaw, Wash., arrived 4-1/2 hours before a store in suburban Seattle began a midnight sale of Windows 95.

“I am just kind of ecstatic right now,” he said after making the purchase. “This is probably the most excited I have been for a program before.”

Because the program will be pre-installed in probably 40 million of the 60 million PCs likely to be sold during the next 12 months, it shouldn’t take long for Microsoft to start earning money from Windows 95.

The company is charging about $100 for it, roughly $25 more than IBM does for OS/2.

That means Microsoft only needs to sell 2 million copies to recover its $200 million in marketing expenses for the year. If development costs, which Microsoft has not disclosed, were $1 billion, it would need to sell 10 million copies to recover that expense.

Industry analysts predict a clear Windows 95 surge that will run through the entire personal computer industry.

Hyperbole aside, many market forecasters Thursday were sticking by their projections. Dataquest, the San Jose, Calif., research firm, continues to project that 14 million copies of Windows 95 will be sold in the first few weeks and that 30 million copies will be sold by the end of the year.

Adding some momentum Thursday was IBM’s announcement that it had signed a licensing deal with Microsoft and would offer the new software on many of its desktop and portable models beginning in September. The International Business Machines Corp. had been a holdout, declining until now to be part of the Windows 95 hoopla.