If you grew up in a non-Mac household as I did, and maybe even if you didn’t, the sounds of those old Windows machines became cemented into your brain like the lyrics to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or the fact that the Macarena existed (why?!). Those Windows noises just became a part of your daily routine, and they signified “Hey look, guys! I’m about to play computer!” (Surely your parents were the only ones that said “Play Computer.”)
The chief noise that hits me in the nostalgia part of the brain is the Windows 95 Startup sound. It’s a six second expression of the wonder of using a PC. It sounds refreshing and maybe used to sound like the future. Or whatever. Maybe it just sounds like your computer needs six more seconds to get ready. Anyway, let’s relive this glorious moment.
Nice, isn’t it.
In honor of the 20th Anniversary of Windows 95, Daniel Jones has slowed down the six second startup sound by 4000% to give us a supremely weird and haunting reinterpretation. It sounds like it should be at the beginning of Vanilla Sky or a really long intro to an Enya song. Give it a listen!
Jones has done the same thing to five other Windows startup sounds: 98, 2000, NT, Vista, and XP. Those are all included in the playlist above as well. 98 sounds vaguely threatening if you ask me. Each of them sounds epic and sort of spacey and definitely not what you’d expect from tiny little noises that exist to tell us our computers are on.
Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below!
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