7 responses to “Good Bye Windows 3”

  1. nic stevens

    Windows/286 and windows/386 both used protected mode and were prior to windows 3.x

  2. Nathan

    Cool article. However, your statement “Was 100% compatible with older MS-DOS applications.” doesn’t really make much sense, considering Windows 3.x was a program, not an OS. Modern OSes need compatibilty because they are the environment the program runs in.

    Windows 3.x is not the environment the programs run in, they run in MS-DOS and Windows 3.x displays them. Therefore, there is not really a compatibility factor.

  3. CaptainZM

    I wonder who designs the mini-OS’s used on all the random crap today? Airline Movies, Cheap Cellphones, probably some newer Cars.

    Microsoft and Apple focus on the big OS’s for Netbooks, PC’s, laptops, etc.

  4. Bill

    Loved 3.1. Still using it on my old computer. Intro of W95 was a sad, sad day.

  5. Jon

    At work, we’ve just removed the last Windows 3.1 machine. A slight upgrade from a 3.1 till and 98 backend to a 98 till and xp backend.

    It always makes me nostalgic – as a fairly young man my first proper computer (ie, the first one my dad let me use) was a 3.1 box and, all things considered, I don’t actually do much more on my 3.6gHz tri-core with it’s 4gig of ram than I did on that little box with it’s megahertz of processing power and kilobytes (maybe megabytes) of memory. Okay, so web pages are more dynamic, but essentially microsoft word and the internet are the same technology – and the games are more realistic, but I could waste just as many hours back then as I can now.

    The most important thing to me, however – the loss of Paintbrush. Paint just doesn’t have the same feel – it isn’t right. I actually hate the windows 7 paint, and preferred Paintbrush to winME/98/XP/vista paint.

    On another note, however – does this technically mean that we’re free to download 3.1? Or does it take more than that to count as abandonware?

  6. Jage

    remind me about 15th years ago 🙂
    .-= Jage´s last blog ..TiPhone T88 With Push Email Feature =-.