One nerdy detail about old operating systems and graphics cards: due to the way the VGA color palette works, the teal background used in Windows 98 and earlier versions of Windows was actually lighter than #008080 if the computer was configured to use 16 colors (not 256 colors):
https://twitter.com/bakertechsrvcs/status/162629846037367193...
https://xcancel.com/bakertechsrvcs/status/162629846037367193...
Another nerdy detail: the default background color on Windows XP was different depending on whether the theme was Luna or Classic. On Classic it is the same one as Windows 2000, but for Luna it is more blueish. I understand the denial, but it will be the 25st anniversary of the XP release in a few months, so it probably qualifies as classic by now.
I always liked the feeling of getting a proper video driver installed and unlocking "true color" support, the desktop background and icons were suddenly much richer and saturated.
I remember that good feeling when getting a new windows 9x machine up and running or installing a new video card, updating the graphics driver to get the display into 16M colors, and enjoying the darker teal. The color itself felt like an upgrade. When that brighter teal appeared you knew you didn't have the driver set, even before seeing any icons.
Man, I wish I could have the 90s back. I absolutely despise where we went with tech in the past decade. I suppose that's a me problem.
I'm with you, the 90s were cool, especially early computing days when things were equally quirky and equally magical.
On that graphics drivers note, I recall some video drivers were just so bad back then you might not get the full colors or resolution depending on your setup. Or some games might just look weird. But there was a cool thirdparty driver called UniVBE from SciTech[1] that you could install for almost any card and suddenly everything looked and worked so much more better, it was like magic. It was one of the go-to utilities I'd always carry around with me in my bag of floppy disks, full of unique, wonderous tools that the world has probably forgotten by now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniVBE
The top-right (16 color) version gives me a "safe mode" tingly sensation :) I didn't know about the Luna/Classic distinction - I guess you don't usually see the Luna color since it's hidden behind Bliss.
That's cool, thanks for sharing. I like the idea of adding XP as an anniversary gift ;)