no cheating
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Specialty folder which did automatic syncing between devices.
Cloud syncing without a subscription? What is this, socialism?
Wasn’t even cloud. Just local device connected by cable. I know mystery how that worked. We kind of asked for dystopia thoug. I remember people complaining about having one extra cable.
You did a dial up from home.
I remember the icon, but I never knew that was it’s purpose.
Unless you had pocket PC or PDA you never needed to touch it. And those were expensive business toys back in the day.
Or just a thumb drive?
This is a year or two before USB. Windows 98 was the first with built in USB support.
I was using briefcase in 2001 or so. You probably could have used it with a zip drive or superdisk before that. But
I hated floppies. I lost so much data on them. They were very unreliable. I actually lost an internship because a floppy failed when I was trying to use it. Rather than blaming the person who was stupid enough to rely on a floppy as the SOLE location of that info, they blamed me. It held AutoCAD drawings that were going in and out of a machine shop. I’m still bitter.
You’re a better person than they ever were. Just remember that you’ll never blame an innocent intern for the mistakes of others.
Trying to remember if those existed at the time. And am not remembering anything.
Apparently it wasn’t removed till win 10…
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/24426-add-briefcase-new-context-menu-windows-10-a.html
I didn’t use it before USB drives cause we usually used laplink to transfer big file collections…
Oh wow. I did not know that. I remember it during Win 95/98 era.
It was a zip file, essentially. You drag files into it, then you drag it to your usb memory stick and take it to work. At wprk, you drag it from the usb drive to your briefacse on the work computer and it updates with the newer copies. That’s about as much as I remember.
This is before usb. It was a dialup synchronizer between your work pc and your home one so that you could keep working on that Word doc.
Wow, I had definitely forgotten about briefcase. I remember clicking on it as a kid but don’t specifically recall what happened. There was no work computer for my folks, my mom worked at home (essentially), so I’m pretty sure it did nothing. I do remember being unsure of its function. I was young though so I was unsure about much.
I was at least barely an adult but not a professional so it had no function for me lol
I think we all ignored that.
I used this all the time with a portable drive in college. I could work on my personal computer (not a laptop), then finish working in the school computer lab and print stuff out.
When did they remove the briefcase?
I remember it on Windows 98, but not XP.
Was it removed with the DOS/NT transition?
Or is it still around, just hidden?
It was definitely on XP
Probably around the time they rolled out OneDrive as a paid subscription service.
In my first briefcase I stored my MS Paint drawings. I got a new job and bought a bigger briefcase, and now I put my Linux isos in there.
It was basically the early version of the Roaming folder. It would sync to a floppy disk.
What version of Windows was this thing in? It looks like a Win 95 style icon.
I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that thing. But then I’d pretty much quit using Windows at the time.
I’ve used every version of Windows between 3.11 and 10. I don’t remember ever noticing that either.
If I remember correctly, it was a regular folder with a special icon. The intention was that you could drag&drop it to some removable media to move between computers.
I guess MS envisioned it as a digital replacement for the physical suitcase of documents you’d bring to/from work.
Furthermore, this “digital replacement” strategy can be seen in other (now mostly defunct) MS programs such as that program that was bundled with windows 3.11 ( I think it was called wincard.exe) that mimiced a rolodex.
I’ll take my MCSE now, thank you.
EDIT: Seems there was some sync stuff with it as well. I’ll settle for some junior certification, thank you.
I guess MS envisioned it as a digital replacement for the physical suitcase of documents you’d bring to/from work.
The whole computer was originally visualized as a digital office replacement. That’s why you have the “desktop,” like an actual desk top surface to work on. Files had icons that looked like papers, folders looked like the tan file folders you’d store in a filing cabinet. Plus a slew of other office-related parallels.
The briefcase was just a continuation of that digital theme. Office workers would bring their work files home in a briefcase to work on later, then bring back to the office the next day. Microsoft tried to digitally replicate that by creating a briefcase folder that would automatically sync your files to a floppy disk, so you didn’t have to do it yourself. The Internet kinda ruined that concept, though. Now you can just email yourself files, text them to yourself on your phone, or store them in a cloud service to edit live on the site.
