How was windows 3.1 back in the day?

[Maximilian]

I remember having it, and i think it was the first GUI windows, was it any good? Or was it considered garbage like ME is garbage today?

Was there any big difference between 3.1 and 95?

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: Soviet
I remember having it, and i think it was the first GUI windows, was it any good? Or was it considered garbage like ME is garbage today?

Was there any big difference between 3.1 and 95?

I recall fighting ini files alot, and while the GUI was nice and all, I recall prefering DOS for the most part LOL. Win95 was far superior and the first windows gaming OS.

 

[LouPoir]

From dos 6.2 to windows 3.1 was an amazing change. What a difference. It was then downhill for Microsoft until WinXP.

IMHO

Lou

 

[spherrod]

I enjoyed using Windows 3.1 - although i did most stuff in DOS back then, I remember being amazed at high colour wallpapers and sounds though

 

[Wolfshanze]

I personally hated Win3.1... I thought it was a sluggish, resource-hungry hog. As long as Win3.1 existed, DOS was the king of the OS's... that's how bad Win3.1 was.

Games were also about 99% DOS during the entire existance of Win3.1... if you wanted to game, you used DOS, and you avoided Win3.1 all-together. While it may have been "simpler" then DOS, there was little you could do in Win3.1. DOS was really the meat and bones OS of choice... for that matter, Win3.1 was nothing but a resource-hungry graphical shell for DOS.

My experience with Win3.1 was so bad, I wanted nothing to do with Win95 when it came out. Not until the market moved-on to Win95 did I finally give up on DOS. Of course, Win95 was such a damn beta-OS itself, that I was the FIRST in-line to upgrade to Win98... because Win95 felt like such a beta-test.

Nonetheless, I have no fond memories of Win3.1 at all... my memory of OS useage goes from various versions of DOS, to Win95, Win98, WinME and WinXP... I don't even think of Win3.1 as something I used (though I did have it).

 

[Goosemaster]

for me it was the preverbial "shiznite"

yeah, the media player hardly worked due to an MCI error and the computer was practically useless for anything but Print Master gold Publishing suite, but I was young, innocent, stpuid, nieve if you will....


and loved every minute of this box that was bought to replace an apple IIe green-screened monster

 

[Wolfshanze]

I went from an Amiga 3000 with workbench as my OS to a DOS/Win3.1 PC... the OS interface was a definate backwards step... Amiga's WorkBench OS was far superior to Win3.1... it wasn't until Win95 that PCs got to a "modern" GUI.

 

[bsobel]

Was there any big difference between 3.1 and 95?

Yes, bigger than there is from 95 to NT.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: Wolfshanze
I personally hated Win3.1... I thought it was a sluggish, resource-hungry hog. As long as Win3.1 existed, DOS was the king of the OS's... that's how bad Win3.1 was.

Games were also about 99% DOS during the entire existance of Win3.1... if you wanted to game, you used DOS, and you avoided Win3.1 all-together. While it may have been "simpler" then DOS, there was little you could do in Win3.1. DOS was really the meat and bones OS of choice... for that matter, Win3.1 was nothing but a resource-hungry graphical shell for DOS.

My experience with Win3.1 was so bad, I wanted nothing to do with Win95 when it came out. Not until the market moved-on to Win95 did I finally give up on DOS. Of course, Win95 was such a damn beta-OS itself, that I was the FIRST in-line to upgrade to Win98... because Win95 felt like such a beta-test.

Nonetheless, I have no fond memories of Win3.1 at all... my memory of OS useage goes from various versions of DOS, to Win95, Win98, WinME and WinXP... I don't even think of Win3.1 as something I used (though I did have it).

Pretty much my experience verbatum. The only difference is that I gave up computers after my 486dx 50 until I got my p4 2.4. So I went from using dos to XP. The only thing I liked about 3.1 was poking a button to launch a program. I had some kind of shareware program that did that though without any of windows overhead, so I never really used 3.1.

 

[ShadowBlade]

the only thing i remember was the "Program Manager" instead of having icons on the desktop, they were in an explorer-like window
no start menu either

(note i used it when i was like 8)

 

[Link19]

Yes, bigger than there is from 95 to NT.

Wasn't Windows 95 based off of Windows 3.1 where as Windows NT was based on a completely different OS core? But the GUI was almost the same in NT4 as it was in 95. But in Windows 3.1, it was completely different than any version of Windows from 95 and NT 4 upwards.

 

[Markbnj]

Windows 95 was built on top of the 16-bit DOS kernel, as was ME, so yes, there was a bigger difference between 95 and NT from a system perspective. If you're talking about user experience, though, I think the poster was correct. Windows 3.1 to 95 was a big set of changes.

Windows 3.1 really felt in all ways like a shell on top of DOS, which is exactly what it was. Myself and a number of people I knew at the time were already fooling around with shells like PC Tools that gave you graphical or text-mode GUI interfaces that made moving files around and whatnot easier to do. But as a programmer I did almost everything important at that time using a text editor and command-line tools.

Nowadays, of course, only Linux people do that .

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: spherrod
I enjoyed using Windows 3.1 - although i did most stuff in DOS back then, I remember being amazed at high colour wallpapers and sounds though

Originally posted by: Wolfshanze
I personally hated Win3.1...

Mixed feelings about it then. I barely remember anything about the OS, there was a free game called "ball" where you played as a ball and it was a similar view to sonic 3D. Also having to type "WIN" to make it work as the comp would dump me at the DOS prompt after startup. As for functionality of the OS... i was also like 8, so i got no idea.

I get the genral idea it was decent enough, but people were better off sticking with DOS or w/e.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: LouPoir
From dos 6.2 to windows 3.1 was an amazing change. What a difference. It was then downhill for Microsoft until WinXP.

What was downhill? After 3.1 came 95, which was WAY better than 3.1, and 98 was even better. Later there was windows 2k, which was way better than 98, and now we have several other good server and even multimedia editions of the OS. Where's the downhill part?

 

[timswim78]

I liked it a lot. I had a 486DX 33Mhz, with 8MB of RAM. It ran just fine with Wordperfect and Netscape. In fact, I bet that it ran those programs better than my current rig runs the contemporaries of those applications.

 

[Link19]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: LouPoir
From dos 6.2 to windows 3.1 was an amazing change. What a difference. It was then downhill for Microsoft until WinXP.

What was downhill? After 3.1 came 95, which was WAY better than 3.1, and 98 was even better. Later there was windows 2k, which was way better than 98, and now we have several other good server and even multimedia editions of the OS. Where's the downhill part?

I think what they meant was how it was downhill for Microsoft compared to what other opertaing systems like OS/2 and Linux had to offer. 32-bit OS/2 and Linux were far superior from a system standpoint to Windows 95/98/ME in every way shape and form. The only thing they didn't have was the market power control that MS had. And Micro$oft didn't own the licensing rights for the OS/2 code, so they couldn't have legally used it and renamed it Windows with the Windows 95 GUI and thus instead used superior technology. And back then, Microsoft's own implementataion of a quality true 32-bit OS Windows NT wasn't ready for home use yet do to its extremely high system requirements and lack of good compatibility with DOS and legacy 16-bit Windows applications. And of course Microsoft would have never dared use the Linux core to build their next OS because it was open source and they wouldn't have been able to gain market control by using open source code to build their OS. SO as a result, a far inferior OS was forced on us into the market place and became dominant. If Microsoft actually owned the licesning rights to the OS/2 code or Microsoft didn't dominate the home consumer OS market and IBM found a way to dominate it instead with a good OS/2 GUI, the whole home consumer PC market would have been using a far superior and real 32-bit OS the last 10 years.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: Link19
I think what they meant was how it was downhill for Microsoft compared to what other opertaing systems like OS/2 and Linux had to offer. 32-bit OS/2 and Linux were far superior from a system standpoint to Windows 95/98/ME in every way shape and form. The only thing they didn't have was the market power control that MS had. And Micro$oft didn't own the licensing rights for the OS/2 code, so they couldn't have legally used it and renamed it Windows with the Windows 95 GUI and thus instead used superior technology. And back then, Microsoft's own implementataion of a quality true 32-bit OS Windows NT wasn't ready for home use yet do to its extremely high system requirements and lack of good compatibility with DOS and legacy 16-bit Windows applications. And of course Microsoft would have never dared use the Linux core to build their next OS because it was open source and they wouldn't have been able to gain market control by using open source code to build their OS. SO as a result, a far inferior OS was forced on us into the market place and became dominant. If Microsoft actually owned the licesning rights to the OS/2 code or Microsoft didn't dominate the home consumer OS market and IBM found a way to dominate it instead with a good OS/2 GUI, the whole home consumer PC market would have been using a far superior and real 32-bit OS the last 10 years.

Somehow I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.

 

[Randum]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: Link19
I think what they meant was how it was downhill for Microsoft compared to what other opertaing systems like OS/2 and Linux had to offer. 32-bit OS/2 and Linux were far superior from a system standpoint to Windows 95/98/ME in every way shape and form. The only thing they didn't have was the market power control that MS had. And Micro$oft didn't own the licensing rights for the OS/2 code, so they couldn't have legally used it and renamed it Windows with the Windows 95 GUI and thus instead used superior technology. And back then, Microsoft's own implementataion of a quality true 32-bit OS Windows NT wasn't ready for home use yet do to its extremely high system requirements and lack of good compatibility with DOS and legacy 16-bit Windows applications. And of course Microsoft would have never dared use the Linux core to build their next OS because it was open source and they wouldn't have been able to gain market control by using open source code to build their OS. SO as a result, a far inferior OS was forced on us into the market place and became dominant. If Microsoft actually owned the licesning rights to the OS/2 code or Microsoft didn't dominate the home consumer OS market and IBM found a way to dominate it instead with a good OS/2 GUI, the whole home consumer PC market would have been using a far superior and real 32-bit OS the last 10 years.

Somehow I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Randum

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: Link19
I think what they meant was how it was downhill for Microsoft compared to what other opertaing systems like OS/2 and Linux had to offer. 32-bit OS/2 and Linux were far superior from a system standpoint to Windows 95/98/ME in every way shape and form. The only thing they didn't have was the market power control that MS had. And Micro$oft didn't own the licensing rights for the OS/2 code, so they couldn't have legally used it and renamed it Windows with the Windows 95 GUI and thus instead used superior technology. And back then, Microsoft's own implementataion of a quality true 32-bit OS Windows NT wasn't ready for home use yet do to its extremely high system requirements and lack of good compatibility with DOS and legacy 16-bit Windows applications. And of course Microsoft would have never dared use the Linux core to build their next OS because it was open source and they wouldn't have been able to gain market control by using open source code to build their OS. SO as a result, a far inferior OS was forced on us into the market place and became dominant. If Microsoft actually owned the licesning rights to the OS/2 code or Microsoft didn't dominate the home consumer OS market and IBM found a way to dominate it instead with a good OS/2 GUI, the whole home consumer PC market would have been using a far superior and real 32-bit OS the last 10 years.

Somehow I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.

 

[jst0ney]

I prefer windows 3.11 for workgroups.

 

[Markbnj]

And of course Microsoft would have never dared use the Linux core to build their next OS because it was open source

I think Linus was about 10 years old then.

 

[Link19]

Somehow I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.

I am not sure if all that regarding who owned what and why MS and IBM choose to do what they did is correct. I was just throwing out guesses based on what I have heard and what seemed like really may have happened.

But I do know this for sure. The core OS of Windows 95/98/ME was by far inferior to 32-bit Unix variants and 32-bit OS/2. A far inferior OS core dominated the market place only because of Microsoft's control. It WAS NEVER because they really had a better product.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: Link19
But I do know this for sure. The core OS of Windows 95/98/ME was by far inferior to 32-bit Unix variants and 32-bit OS/2. A far inferior OS core dominated the market place only because of Microsoft's control. It WAS NEVER because they really had a better product.

Did you ever use OS/2? Or any of those so-called superior Unix variants? Windows dominated the market and still does for a reason. The core has nothing to do with it.

 

[Link19]

Did you ever use OS/2? Or any of those so-called superior Unix variants? Windows dominated the market and still does for a reason. The core has nothing to do with it.

I did use OS/2. I thought it was great and so much better performance and more stable than Windows 95/98. Windows only dominated the market because Microsoft had the control that no one else had. They still do today for the same reason. Most people thought that any OS that didn't have the name Windows meant it wasn't the point and click interface and thus not easy to use. That is how Microsoft was able to gain the control so easily. At least now, we are using a decent OS based on NT. Windows NT was a fine and respectable OS. Windows 95/98/ME are not.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Link19

Did you ever use OS/2? Or any of those so-called superior Unix variants? Windows dominated the market and still does for a reason. The core has nothing to do with it.

I did use OS/2. I thought it was great and so much better performance and more stable than Windows 95/98. Windows only dominated the market because Microsoft had the control that no one else had. They still do today for the same reason. Most people thought that any OS that didn't have the name Windows meant it wasn't the point and click interface and thus not easy to use. That is how Microsoft was able to gain the control so easily. At least now, we are using a decent OS based on NT. Windows NT was a fine and respectable OS. Windows 95/98/ME are not.

MS had no control prior to Win95. OS2 failed since Microsoft bent over backwards for developers and IBM tried to use developers as a source of income.