[imagesource: YouTube / Slate]

Is there a more mid-1990s sound than the startup sound made by Windows 95?

Yes, the theme song for Friends.

“So no one told you life was gonna be this way, Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, Your love life’s DOA”.

Rumour has it that if you shout ‘pivot’ every time you move a couch you officially qualify as a member of the Friends fan club.

Anyway, the mid-90s saw desktop computers appearing in homes across the US and the world, most of which ran on Windows 95.

Microsoft enlisted the help of the era’s most famous faces to talk users through the ordeal. Here’s Slate:

We’re talking ‘Friends’ friends Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry, stars of a long video that fairly reeks of the Must See TV sitcom aesthetic, filled with non sequitur introductions of wacky characters…

Strangely, it’s not bad. Definitely not as bad as you’d think based on the central conceit: Aniston and Perry arrive at Bill Gates’ office for a casting call for a Microsoft video, and Gates’ personal secretary takes them on a helpful tour of the new operating system.

Incredibly, the full tutorial is 56 minutes long.

In it, Perry sends an email to a friend, the Gates-style nerd talks about “the information superhighway”, and everyone looks at pictures of cats.

Some things never change.

Slate has edited the video to a more manageable length for those who want to revisit a simpler time:

[source:slate]