Redmond, Wash (AP) - Fans and detractors of the long-awaited Microsoft Windows 95 have been stunned and amazed by the incredible events surrounding the August 24 release. Windows 95 has been hailed by industry giant Pierson Holcombe Pewter as "the most advanced operating system ever produced." But even he could not have predicted yesterday's events.

It began when peace was declared in Bosnia. Said Ahmad G'Hui, spokesperson for the Serbs, "Now that [Windows 95] has been released, we just don't see any reason to fight each other. This is an amazing product."

Then France announced its intention to stop all testing of nuclear weapons. "We used to think that our national boundaries were of utmost import. To safeguard them, it was necessary to continue testing [nuclear weapons]," said Jacques Fenetre of the French government. "The Microsoft Network (tm) has changed all of that. It's such a small planet!"

On the other side of the "small planet", George Bush and Saddam Hussein met face-to-face for the first time. After a tense greeting, they started sharing notes about their experiences as Windows 95 beta-testers. Soon the two lifelong enemies were laughing and chatting like old friends. In a startling display of candor, Hussein said "If I hadn't been so frustrated with the beta, I'd have backed off from Kuwait much sooner." Bush laughed and commiserated with Hussein, saying "Well, Saddam, I *told* you it'd be released eventually, all you had to do was wait. Hey! Let's play some FreeCell!"

Oil prices dropped as OPEC transferred their accounting software to the new platform. Loggers in the United States' Pacific Northwest turned their axes in for spades after seeing a Microsoft Video of spotted owls using Windows 95. In an economic shocker, the Peso reversed its downward spiral due to huge Windows 95 sales in Acapulco and Mexico City.

On the health front, Hildegard Wicca, a housewife in Boston, MA, reports that Windows 95 has removed her facial warts. "I sat down in front of the computer, pressed 'Start', and felt something odd on my face. When I looked in a mirror, my warts were gone!" Even more amazing is the story of Mark Cense, the Los Alamos man who was reported last week as having an incurable, fatal form of cancer. His doctors were amazed yesterday when, after simply buying Windows 95 at the local Computer Universe store, his cancer went into remission.

When asked for a comment on these almost miraculous events, Microsoft's Bill Gates, recently declared to be the richest man in the United States, replied "If you think *this* is good, just wait until you see Windows 97!"

Reports that China's release of dissident Harry Wu was contingent on his returning with "as many copies of Windows 95 as he can carry" are unconfirmed at this time.

He started out by explaining that icons were like glimpses of what was behind them, and proceeded to show the Accessories "menu." He talked about how wonderful this deal was since the machine came with so much preloaded software, and then gave a brief description of each icon in Accessories. First there was "A-Write" the "word processing package" (I think he called it "A-Write" because the icon for Write has a fountain pen drawing an A...) Then there was Paintbrush, which allows you to "do your 3D work" he said.

"For example, if you were designing a house, you could keep all the floor plans and layouts in here."

Next was Terminal, "which lets you uhhh, uhhhh, add another uhh, terminal to your computer."

He fumbled a little more and skipped Notepad, presumably because he couldn't make up anything good to say just after describing "A-Write."

Next: "It has this Recorder, which helps you be a little like Steven Spielberg...it interfaces directly with your VHS cassetes."

While pointing at the next icon he proudly announced that the machine even came with a built-in Clock. There was Calculator, which of course "manages your finances." He mentioned some of the "executive" features, like Calendar and Cardfile. He pretty much gave up at Object Packager, but saved the moment by kicking into a demo of the "word processing package" because "If you're like me, that's where your family will spend most of it's time." In his "A-Write" demo, he drooled about how versatile the software was. (somehow the common font picker dialog just didn't convince me to pick up the phone and order a ThinkPad) As proof of how useful the "word processing package" was, he "printed in" a sentence: "Dean shows hot computers on qvc."

Then "Oh jeez!" he exclaimed, "It's been a long day folks, I mispelled my own first name!" (Dan)

He proceeded to hit the backspace key 31 TIMES, leaving only the 'D'. He started retyping the rest of the sentence, but gave up midway and moved on.

"Let me tell you something: This thing will really change your life!"

He started babbling about "executive" features again and fired up the cardfile "database system." It kinda took the punch out when the camera zoomed back in and you saw that there were three dessert recipes on the screen.

The stupidity went on, but mostly on other bundled things like "C-Mail" (I think he meant Lotus Cc:Mail) and some IBM antivirus utilities.

An interesting note: In one screen shot it was evident that IBM had replaced the MS-DOS icon with a PC-DOS icon that looks almost identical to the OS/2 logo.

Later on, while showing off the manuals, he held up the clearly labelled "IBM PC-DOS" book and said "...you get an MS-DOS manual..."