Restarting your computer is necessary to complete several maintenance tasks, but many users find themselves doing it frequently for stability and/or security reasons. The vast majority of operating systems and environments have a dedicated menu to restart or shut down each computer, and the portal called The Restart Page presents some of the most important examples.
The Evolution of Shutdown Menus
When Windows 95 began to do its thing, one of its most striking aspects was having to tell the computer the decision to shut it down or restart it. In Windows 3.x, we simply closed the session to return to DOS, and once there, everything came down to flipping the switch, pressing the Reset button, or resorting to the classic Ctrl+Alt+Del. Of course, this applies only to the DOS+Windows combo.
The computer market had other options, equipped with other operating systems, in which the so-called shutdown menu was much more familiar. The menu in question was always Spartan, although efficient: Shut down the system, restart, log off to change users, or enter sleep mode were presented as the main options.
Relive Classic Designs
Now, modern operating systems have redesigned these options, but if you want to remember some of the old designs, all you have to do is visit the portal The Restart Page. There you'll see elements belonging to different versions of Windows (1.0, 95, 98, 2000, XP), several flavors of Mac OS (the Chicago font is impossible to ignore), and other environments a bit further from the average user, such as QNX and NeXTSTEP.
Basically, when you click on a menu, The Restart Page will simulate a system restart, playing any related sound and animation. In the case of Windows systems, we can observe the memory count on the theoretical computer that runs them, a nice detail to enrich the experience.
A Nostalgic Collaboration
From what we've been able to verify, The Restart Page is the result of a collaboration for a concept called Year Zero, which was developed in 2011. Yes, The Restart Page may be a simple curiosity like so many on the Web, but it offers us a pot of nostalgia, and here we are with the spoon in hand.
