Hacker Installs Windows 95 on a Samsung Smartwatch

With Apple, Samsung, and Google all in the game, the smartwatch just may be the device of the future.

But can the cutting-edge computer watches of today run a 20-year-old version of Windows?

One crafty developer thought he’d find out.

The answer pretty much turns out to be “no.” However, the above YouTube video, spotted by The Verge, does show Windows 95 at least being installed and booted on a Samsung Gear Live smartwatch before everything completely crashes out. So there’s that.

The footage of the software setup was sped up 25x in this video, so we can assume the process of getting it semi-running took quite a while. And once everything was finally loaded, the hacker showed that no applications would open, citing an out-of-RAM-memory error.

So, yep. We can cross Microsoft’s 1995 version of Windows off the list of things that are a good match for the smartwatch (at least the 2014 smartwatch).

Read: David Pogue’s take on Android smartwatches

Also not on that list: browsing the Internet.

Sharing the same adventurous spirit as the Android tinkerer from the video, we did recently try out an Android Wear app called WIB (Wear Internet Browser) to see if it was possible to keep our phones in our pockets and surf the Web entirely on our watches. Although it wasn’t quite the failure that trying to install an entire desktop operating system on a wrist was, we found it to be not worthwhile all the same.

For the time being, we’ll probably leave the smartwatch to do what it’s best at: things like taking selfies with the snap of your fingers, or creeping out loved ones by sending them a simulation of your heartbeat.

Have questions, comments, or just want to tell me something funny? Email me at danbean@yahoo-inc.com.