Description
Windows 95 changed multitasking forerever in two ways:
1. Preemptive Multitasking. Prior versions of Windows used cooperative multitasking. This meanst that an application had to let go access to the CPU for another application to use it. Because of this, if an app crashed, the whole computer would freeze and you would have to restart.
Windows 95 used preemptive multitasking. In preemptive multitasking, it is the operating system that chooses which apps have access to the CPU. This meant that you could simply close an app that is not responding instead of restarting your computer.
2. Introduction of 32-bit OS. Prior versions of Windows were mainly 16-bit operating systems. Since Windows 95 was a 32-bit OS, it meant that you could use more RAM and thus run more applications.