Microsoft stops selling Windows 3.x
You will be missed.
My friends often show concern about being obsolete when I tell them to stay with Windows XP and skip Windows Vista entirely. Little do they know, a lot of people are still actually using Windows 3.x. And for those, I have some bad news.
According to BBC, Microsoft finally decided to stop selling licenses of Windows 3.x, starting this month.
The third major release of Windows first came out in May 1990 with a few minor releases in the early 1990s. It was Microsoft's first big success with operating systems that have graphical user interfaces.
Windows 3.x is actually just a software application that runs in MS-DOS environment. However, thanks to its rich graphics and the ability to multitask, it completely changed the way people interact with computers.
Microsoft stopped its support for Windows 3.x at the end of 2001 but left it as an embedded operating system until now.
I personally have a lot of good memories of Windows 3.11 on my 386 computer and really enjoyed its ability to display 256 colors on a 1,024x768 screen resolution.
While this is rather sad news, considering that it is a 16-bit operating system that can address just a little more than 640KB of RAM and is definitely not secure enough for the Internet, it's probably time for you to upgrade.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong.
Ditto old operating systems. There are newer and better, but when all you need is KISS for an embeded application like controlling the menu on your cheap throw away MP3 player. It's good stuff.
Pardon me, but shouldn't that be attributed to Apple computers? Microsoft pretty much copied Apple's OS (yes, I know about Xerox). Do you assert that Microsoft changed user interaction based on the number of users they were able to reach vs. Apple, or is that based on the product itself? Windows 3.x was a slow, buggy, unattractive mess, and Mac users laughed at how all those MS-DOS users reveled in the "new" concept of a GUI that had already been in use for years. Indeed, Microsoft had the more effective business plan...
We used programs such as a Packard Bell GUI to run our DOS programs or boot into Windows 3.0 or 3.11, we edited and saved variations of autoexec.bat and config.com to run certain games such as Jet Figher 2 and 3, Falcon 3, etc, because each one addressed the limited 640K of RAM differently or had different IRQ requirements to make the audio work, we created *.bat files and used boot.com to recall these various *.bat and *.com files which then automatically re-booted the computer and launched our favorite game, then when we exited the game thanks to the *.bat file WE created, the computer restored itself back to a "normal" state and rebooted.....just remembered, you could run Privateer 2 The Darkening on a 640K system which had video of real actors back in the mid 1990s.
Back then WE knew how to run our computers, now, when someone tells me they lost a file and I ask them where they store their files...all I usually get is a blank stare.
Craig Knapp
True that.
Correction to previous post...config.sys not config.com files.
Craig Knapp
"While this is rather sad news, considering that it is a 16-bit operating system that can address just a little more than 640KB of RAM and is definitely not secure enough for the Internet, it's probably time for you to upgrade. "
...but Win3x can definitely address more that a "little more than 640KB of RAM". It runs in a pseudo-16bit protected mode (386 Enhanced) and definitely address at least 16MB of RAM, even as high as 64MB, but I've heard of people having problems when going beyond 16MB, or running apps that need more than that for themselves...
-
by Visualdude
November 10, 2008 2:57 PM PST
- I think the key words for who was using it are "embedded" and "license". MS was not likely even producing paper for selling it. I wonder if NT 3.51 embedded is still for sale.
-
Reply to this comment
-
(17 Comments)The memory statement caught my eye too. My first PC had 1Mb and I eventually spent the $500 bucks to bring it up to 4Mb. My processor was a AMD 386DX. I think I still have the CPU kicking around in a box someplace. FYI on the memory. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126746/en-us
I also think that WFW was more than a application, even if DOS was underneath it. Would you call a VM instance an application? The fact that it ran as an application was great though. In the early days we ran a shared Windows 3.1 environment on our Novell network. Talk about your thin client. We booted by floppy and the Novell login script would change to the user directory and launch win.exe.