This Week Marks the 25th Anniversary of Windows 3.0

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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We would be remiss in our duties if we didn’t mention the 25th anniversary release of Microsoft’s revolutionary Windows 3.0 on May 22nd, 1990. Windows 3.0 interface brought Microsoft up to an even par with the Mackintosh system and came preinstalled on new personal computers. Happy Anniversary 3.0! :cool:
 
I've long believed that Windows 3.0 was the most important version of Windows ever. Prior versions of Windows basically sucked and then Windows 3.0 was the proverbial eureka moment. Windows 3.0 had tons of flaws but this was the version where things just clicked and the rest is history.
 
heatlesssun said:
I've long believed that Windows 3.0 was the most important version of Windows ever. Prior versions of Windows basically sucked and then Windows 3.0 was the proverbial eureka moment. Windows 3.0 had tons of flaws but this was the version where things just clicked and the rest is history.
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I would say that Windows 95 is by far the most important version. It finally brought everything together. Up until this point Windows was just "another" program within the DOS environment. Windows 95 brought all processes under one umbrella, or at least moved towards that direction. Plus it got rid of the dreaded 640K base memory.

It also brought USB, Plug & Play, & DirectX. All 3 of which are still in use. And all 3 made using a computer SOOOO much better then how things were previous. People usually only think of DirectX for stuff like graphics. But it did wonders for other stuff like sound, game controllers, and codecs. The stuff that was a real pain in the ass to deal with.

What's that? You liked having different startup disks for each game based on balancing base memory between the game and hardware?
Granted you did have to drop into DOS in the beginning of Windows 95 for some games, but that quickly went away.

Windows 95 also set the precedents for the "desktop" environment, of which is still in use today and is emulated by nearly every popular OS in existence today. Windows 3.1 and before were a mess of icon collections. It was better then DOS for sure, but still a clutter of cascades.
 
heatlesssun said:
I've long believed that Windows 3.0 was the most important version of Windows ever. Prior versions of Windows basically sucked and then Windows 3.0 was the proverbial eureka moment. Windows 3.0 had tons of flaws but this was the version where things just clicked and the rest is history.
Click to expand...

I still have one thing I do on my Windows desktop that is a holdover habit from using Windows 3.x...

Every program I install, when it creates a shortcut (or if I need to make one for it) on the desktop, I move it to a folder on the desktop called Proggy Bin so I can alt-tab to it when my desktop is covered in open programs. Yeah, I know there are keyboard shortcuts to hide and show open programs... but alt-tabbing to Proggy Bin is just ingrained and easier for me.

That habit is now 25 years old. Shit.
 
westrock2000 said:
I would say that Windows 95 is by far the most important version. It finally brought everything together.
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The excitement and enthusiasm for Windows 95 was created by Windows 3.x. I agree that Windows 95 bought a lot of features and defined the Windows UI for decades to come but Windows 3.0 is where the dominance of Windows started and it was the first commercially successful version on Windows. I think Windows 3.0 and Windows NT 3.5 were the biggest game changing products Microsoft has ever produced.
 
Cobalt35 said:
Mackintosh? lol

I remember 3.0 and then 3.1 and 3.11... fun days :)
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Oh gods... Windows 3.11 with multimedia extensions. 1500 ms access time cd roms minimum, up to 2000 ms delay when calling for sound playback, no immediate mode. Made making games a nightmare. Had a hardware vendor try to make Descent for 3.11 instead of Win 95 for the Nvidia Nv1. Fortunately a conference call about a 3rd of the way in of development Nvidia wanted to know why said hardware company was complaining about performance. I explained why and said it needed to be Win 95. They agreed and politely asked who the moron was that mandated this. The hardware vendor is no more, but the unnamed moron is still roaming around the games hardware business.
 
Windows 3.0 is when they killed the most of the office competition. Windows 3.1 put the survivors out of their misery. Anti-Competitive for the Win.
 
jpm100 said:
Windows 3.0 is when they killed the most of the office competition. Windows 3.1 put the survivors out of their misery. Anti-Competitive for the Win.
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It is not Microsoft's fault that IBM did not have a clue with OS/2. Also, it is not their fault that Commodore was clueless with the Amiga and went bankrupt. :(
 
ManofGod said:
It is not Microsoft's fault that IBM did not have a clue with OS/2. Also, it is not their fault that Commodore was clueless with the Amiga and went bankrupt. :(
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He's probably referring to Lotus, which was the de facto standard in DOS.
 
ManofGod said:
You are probably right but, it would seem that would be another IBM screw up. :D
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Unfortunately Notes is STILL in use by some major corporations trust me I know. On the Amiga front the failure was sitting on the AGA (256 colors)chipset for years. When it finally came out (1200 & 600) they had finished AAA chipset (16 million colors). AGA was well behind PC at that point. people were already transitioning to video cards with 16 bit and 24bit color. Stupid greed by commodore. Tried milking original Amiga for too much and then thought they could milk a day late and a dollar short.

PS - Yeah original Amiga had HAM mode but it was a stone cold bitch to try and use in actual gameplay. The only game I worked on that did it was Futue Wars and that was only opening game sequence. Plus 12bits who thought a byte and a nibble was the best way to drive palette on a computer?
 
jpm100 said:
Windows 3.0 is when they killed the most of the office competition. Windows 3.1 put the survivors out of their misery. Anti-Competitive for the Win.
Click to expand...

Prior to Windows 3.0 there were a number of competing GUI layers out there. Windows 3.0 was a big leap over them and even prior versions of Windows. Yes Microsoft did many anti-competitive things related to Windows but Windows 3.0 was game changing in that it was simply a big step forward in a GUI layer for relatively inexpensive PCs as a relatively low price at the time.

Microsoft makes a lot mistakes and has played a lot of dirty tricks over the years but in all of that they actually create some pretty good products and Windows 3.0 was one of them.
 
I'll agree the 3.0 was the "eureka" moment.

But it was 95 where the whole train arrived at the station.

In reality, no one has really wanted the core appearance and functionality to change since 95 which was a big part of why the interface of 8 has been such a flop.

It's a tough rut to get out of.
 
Advil said:
In reality, no one has really wanted the core appearance and functionality to change since 95 which was a big part of why the interface of 8 has been such a flop.

It's a tough rut to get out of.
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Indeed. Regardless of how likeable Windows is on the desktop the world simply doesn't need as many conventional PCs with the arrival of smartphones and tablets.
 
Advil said:
It's a tough rut to get out of.
Click to expand...

It's like the typewriter. Sure, there's "better" key layouts out there, some people swear by DVORAK... but we're all using the QWERTY layout because it's established and hit the sweet spot when it did.

I feel the same way about having a start button on machines. Having to hit search and type in the app name to find an app on MacOSX feels so awkward in comparison. On any given OS, if you have a program menu/start button in the corner to click on, anyone can use it to get started. Change too much from that and you have the complaints that we heard about with Win8.
 
MajorDomo said:
We would be remiss in our duties if we didn’t mention the 25th anniversary release of Microsoft’s revolutionary Windows 3.0 on May 22nd, 1990. Windows 3.0 interface brought Microsoft up to an even par with the Mackintosh system and came preinstalled on new personal computers. Happy Anniversary 3.0! :cool:
Click to expand...

I cut my teeth on Win3.1, IBM PS/2 with Intel 486 SX25 16 bit CPU (yes that's 25 MHz), 128 Kilobytes RAM, and a Maxtor 128 MB hardrive. God, those were the days. Not! :D
 
heatlesssun said:
I've long believed that Windows 3.0 was the most important version of Windows ever. Prior versions of Windows basically sucked and then Windows 3.0 was the proverbial eureka moment. Windows 3.0 had tons of flaws but this was the version where things just clicked and the rest is history.
Click to expand...

3.0 was still a glorified skin for DOS, it still needed something like Norton Desktop because of the way the file explorer worked (badly), and on and on.

Windows 95 was really when it became up to snuff and could be compared to MacOS. 3.0 was important but not nearly the necessary quantum leap that 95 was.
 
Dildonose said:
I cut my teeth on Win3.1, IBM PS/2 with Intel 486 SX25 16 bit CPU (yes that's 25 MHz), 128 Kilobytes RAM, and a Maxtor 128 MB hardrive. God, those were the days. Not! :D
Click to expand...

486 CPUs are 32-bit, not 16-bit.

I also very highly doubt you were running 128KB of RAM. Even the L2 cache on the motherboard would have probably been at least 256KB.

You also would not have been able to run Windows 3.1 with that little amount of RAM. In fact, pretty much nothing in DOS would have even run.

I am betting you had at least 4MB of RAM.
 
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