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Microsoft Windows 3.0 Is 20 Years Today

Posted by timothy on from the great-platform-for-playing-jeopardy dept.

siliconbits writes "Some say that the Windows 3.0 GUI (remember, it needed MS-DOS or DR-DOS to work) was the single most important version, as it allowed Microsoft to get its day. The first truly successful Windows operating system is 20 years old today; Windows 3.0 was launched on 22 May 1990 and was the successor to Windows 2.1x."

6 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. I remember.... by jolyonr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I remember going to a big computer show in early 1990 up in Birmingham. This was just before the Windows 3.0 announcement, so the Microsoft booth had a secret area inside it where they were showing the product to invited guests. As a dedicated Amiga fanatic at the time, I wasn't entirely impressed with it - however I did go back and recommend to my employer at the time (BP - no I don't work for them any more) that they should start looking into Windows again (we'd discounted Windows 2.x for widespread deployment).

    Commodore used the same show to preview the Amiga 3000 computer, which was far more exciting to me, and I put my order in a couple of days after!

    Jolyon

    --


    Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
  2. Much better article on the subject by lseltzer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    by me in PCMag....

  3. Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 3, Interesting

    because it had truetype fonts. The combination of Windows 3.1 and HP's deskjet printers made it possible to perform desktop publishing for hundreds of dollars less than using other alternatives.

    Of course, it didn't work as well as the other alternatives either. I worked at a service bureau at that time and we absolutely hated it when files that had been created under Windows 3.x came in because we knew it was going to cause us headaches. While Windows might have worked okay for simple documents printed to a user's own printer, it wasn't adequate for high-end graphics work.

    --
    This ain't rocket surgery.
  4. Win 3.1 emulator by complacence · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Try this one.

  5. Re:Bing is following Google's lead by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So you're saying that we went from PacMan to WIndows 3.0 in only 9 years, 364 days? Wow, that seemed to fly past.

  6. Re:Windows 3.1 was more significant by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember supporting PageMaker on Mac and Windows - it was awful on both platforms (this was Pre-Quark when PageMaker was pretty much the only app to do layout with). To get really good results on the Mac you have to have an 8-10k machine, to get decentish results on a Windows PC you could get away with a $1200 Dell.

    In other words - an 8 meg Mac was worthless for DTP, but an 8 meg Dell did ok at it - I think this was largely for the fact that System 7 just had that much more overhead. 8 megs was a ton of ram for Windows 3.x, but I can specifically remember my 8 meg IICX being horrible at about everything (and it was like an 8000 dollar machine with the nice screen attached) until it was upgraded to 32 (I think) - which was a ton of money at the time.