Tech & Biz

C:\ Windows 3.x \ Dead

by Jason Sanders | November 5, 2008 at 04:32 pm

181 views | 9 Recommendations | 2 comments

While users are fighting for Windows XP's survival, Microsoft has quietly extinguished Windows 3.x during the night. This was Microsoft's first popular GUI interface, one that can still be seen hiding in XP like a tattoo that won't go away.

I actually used DOS as my first operating system, but quickly transitioned from C:\ to a mouse. Commander Keen still played fine and I was well on my way to using the Internets (it was singular back then.) Goodbye old friend, I haven't thought of you in a long, long time.

An application has expectedly quit.

Windows 3.x has come to the closing moments of its long life.

On 1 November Microsoft stopped issuing licences for the software that made its debut in May 1990 in the US.

The various versions of Windows 3.x (including 3.11) released in the early 1990s, were the first of Microsoft's graphical user interfaces to win huge worldwide success.

They helped Microsoft establish itself and set the trend for how it makes its revenues, and what drives the company until the present day.

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transproconsulting

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 22:00 on November 5th, 2008

Should have kept 3.1 and trashed Vista. Does this mean we have another 15 years for XP because I think we'll need it.

eluxzen

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 03:33 on November 6th, 2008

Jason Sanders, I like this story. I think nearly all people (young in the '90's) have worked with it. I thought it was already long dead! In the year 2000 I did an internship at the Royal Dutch Embassy in New Delhi and discovered they still worked with it! By then it was actually already obsolete off course but due to safety the Dutch Ministery of Foreign Affairs considered it safer than Windows98 or WindowsNT!