Microsoft scheduled the release of Windows 95 for August 1995. With the huge growth of the personal computer software market, the company had to make sure that the complex new release was as trouble-free as possible.

David Cole, Microsoft’s general manager for the testing and debugging effort, was quoted as saying that the new software is supposed to make PCs as reliable as any home appliance. He even bought 400 copies of Windows 95 and used his pickup truck to drive them out to testers who reported what they found. Here, Cole stands next to his empty pickup truck.

Caption information source: “Windows 95 will show if Microsoft did its homework – product must be bug-free to fulfill hopes”, by Jim Erickson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 21, 1995, pages B6, B7.