25 Years Today - Windows 3.0

An anonymous reader writes: Windows 3.0 was launched on 22 May 1990 — I know, 'coz I was there as a SDE on the team. I still have, um, several of the shrink-wrapped boxes of the product — with either 3.5 inch and 5.25 floppies rattling around inside them — complete with their distinctive 'I witnessed the event' sticker!

It was a big deal for me, and I still consider Win 3 as *the* most significant Windows' release, and I wonder what other Slashdotters think, looking back on Win 3?

Comments

Invulnerable

[Anonymous Coward]

The last version of Windows to never have had a remote exploit in the standard distribution.

I luuuuuved Win 3.x

[clovis]

Speaking as a support person, I loved Window 3.x.
It trained the entire world to expect that their computer to crash often, even daily, and that those crashes could be explained away with "Yep, that happens".
Followed by "You need to reboot more often".
Before MS Windows, I supported mainframes and those customers wanted to know why for every crash, which was rare except for hardware failure, and they expected it to get fixed so that it didn't happen again. Those people are still like that, and they pay plenty for it.

After MS Windows, life was pretty much like this:
"My computer is broken."
      "Is it on fire?"
"No."
      "Then reboot. If it still doesn't work I'll send someone to re-install everything" (thinly disguised threat)

Re:Big deal for MS, shit for the rest of the world

[techno-vampire]

This is the start of the 3 Rs of Windows. Retry, Reboot and Reinstall.

Actually, there are 5 Rs. The last two are Reformat, RedHat.