Windows 3.0

[Duke of Buckingham]

1990–1994: Windows 3.0–Windows NT—Getting the graphics

On May 22, 1990, Microsoft announces Windows 3.0, followed shortly by Windows 3.1 in 1992. Taken together, they sell 10 million copies in their first 2 years, making this the most widely used Windows operating system yet. The scale of this success causes Microsoft to revise earlier plans. Virtual Memory improves visual graphics. In 1990 Windows starts to look like the versions to come.

Windows now has significantly better performance, advanced graphics with 16 colors, and improved icons. A new wave of 386 PCs helps drive the popularity of Windows 3.0. With full support for the Intel 386 processor, programs run noticeably faster. Program Manager, File Manager, and Print Manager arrive in Windows 3.0.


Bill Gates shows the newly-released Windows 3.0

Windows software is installed with floppy discs bought in large boxes with heavy instruction manuals.

The popularity of Windows 3.0 grows with the release of a new Windows software development kit (SDK), which helps software developers focus more on writing programs and less on writing device drivers.

Windows is increasingly used at work and home and now includes games like Solitaire, Hearts, and Minesweeper. An advertisement: “Now you can use the incredible power of Windows 3.0 to goof off.”

Windows for Workgroups 3.11 adds peer-to-peer workgroup and domain networking support and, for the first time, PCs become an integral part of the emerging client/server computing evolution.

[Slicker]

The only reason it was "the most widely used Windows operating system yet" was because the previous Windows 286 and Windows 386 versions were so buggy that people were still using DOS based task switchers and memory managers such as QEMM. Win 3.1 was the first one that actually worked. Windows for Workgroups (v3.11) was what really made Microsoft rich. Novell, which had ruled the market, died quickly after that. Between the DOS interface for Novell and the fact that they kept IPS/SPX and didn't adopt TCP/IP which meant no internet or easy WAN configurations was a double nail in their coffins. Then they bought a bunch of business products from a variety of different software companies, gave them somewhat but obviously different GUI interfaces, and named them "Microsoft Office". That took Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, WordPerfect, and all the others out of the running.

[Duke of Buckingham]

The only reason it was "the most widely used Windows operating system yet" was because the previous Windows 286 and Windows 386 versions were so buggy that people were still using DOS based task switchers and memory managers such as QEMM. Win 3.1 was the first one that actually worked. Windows for Workgroups (v3.11) was what really made Microsoft rich. Novell, which had ruled the market, died quickly after that. Between the DOS interface for Novell and the fact that they kept IPS/SPX and didn't adopt TCP/IP which meant no internet or easy WAN configurations was a double nail in their coffins. Then they bought a bunch of business products from a variety of different software companies, gave them somewhat but obviously different GUI interfaces, and named them "Microsoft Office". That took Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, WordPerfect, and all the others out of the running.

Good opinion Slicker my friend. I would like more people opinions about this matter.

It seems to me that the NT windows had more importance on improvements for windows itself but that would be a personal point of view out of this history, in a world where appearance is more important than anything else it would be very strange not to talk about Windows 3.x anyway ...

[John P. Myers]

Actually it was all a scam All the way up through Windows Millennium Edition was nothing more than DOS run in protected mode with a GUI. The GUI was named Windows. That's it. If you deleted command.com, you broke your computer. DOS was always the actual OS behind it all

[Gopher_FreeDC]

Actually it was all a scam All the way up through Windows Millennium Edition was nothing more than DOS run in protected mode with a GUI. The GUI was named Windows. That's it. If you deleted command.com, you broke your computer. DOS was always the actual OS behind it all

That's true but Win ME was still just a rework of Win 98se and a BAD one at that...
Don't forget Win 95 brought us PnP - Plug n Pray....

[Fire$torm]

That's true but Win ME was still just a rework of Win 98se and a BAD one at that...
Don't forget Win 95 brought us PnP - Plug n Pray....

Really really bad.......

My ranking of WinOS's (worst to best):

Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 3.0/3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 7
Windows 2000 Pro

[Bryan]

Win 3.1 was the 1st one that I actually used. I had tried the versions prior to that but they had no benefit over pure DOS or task switchers like HP's Dashboard. The previous versions did nothing more than switch tasks but it used too much of the 640k of main memory or 2M of extended memory! IIRC the 80386 was the 1st machine that supported virtual machines (8086) so with Win 3.1 it would actually support multi-tasking. That was a big step forward.

To give an idea of what things were like, I worked for HP and had just purchased a personal 5" full height 40M HDD .... I thought I had arrived. Seagate had purchased a week's worth of technical support/programming to help them put together a test system at their HDD R&D facility. So I went out for a week to give them a hand. While I was there they showed me a 5" half height drive that was 160M. Apparently I was mesmerized and drooling because without me saying a word the guy just looked at me and said; "No, I can't give you one!"

[kmanley57]

Skipped all that:

DOS -> CPM -> Windows 95

audio tapes -> 8" floppies -> 40MB hard drive.

GOSH! I miss playing the audio tape 8-9 times before you get the program to load correctly!

[myshortpencil]

Skipped all that:

DOS -> CPM -> Windows 95

audio tapes -> 8" floppies -> 40MB hard drive.

GOSH! I miss playing the audio tape 8-9 times before you get the program to load correctly!

I miss programming with toggle switches.

altair8800.jpg

[Slicker]

IIRC the 80386 was the 1st machine that supported virtual machines (8086) so with Win 3.1 it would actually support multi-tasking.

Windows only multi-tasked when the app felt like allowing some other app to use the CPU. It didn't have preemptive multi-tasking like OS/2 or BSD Unix, VMS, or any of the other major operating systems of the time did. (OK, VMS didn't run in PCs.)

I preferred OS/2 myself, but like Linux, tweaking and tuning required some technical savvy which is why Windows trounced it in the market. That and their development was about as easy as OS X GUI development is today. There are waaaaayyy better tools for Windows. That and it is hard to win the OS battle when you have to have an emulator to run the other OS's applications. IMO, OS/2 ran Windows better than Microsoft since you could launch each app in a separate protected thread and if one crashed, it didn't affect the others. Let's face it, if Linux has to emulate Windows via WINE, it isn't winning in the OS market. Windows doesn't emulate Linux. The Linux GUI is starting to get as bloated as Windows. That's not a winning scenario either.

Tell me this, what part of the Windows UI that you can't live without didn't exist in Win95? And, why does it take 10 times the RAM of Win95 in order to run? I'm guessing it is lazy programmers who can't be bothered to optimize their code. It used to be that the OS developers were the top of their field -- you know, the really smart guys who knew everything there was to know about coding and optimization and worked strictly in assembly language. Not anymore. It is getting hard to find developers who prefer a keyboard to a mouse.