Windows 3.1 is neat. Even though it crashes a lot...

Deskmate was the first GUI that I used. It was lame. Windows 3.1 is very cool by comparison and was definitely thrilling for me. I wasted tons of time tweaking everything about it back in the day.

I occasionally set it up in Dosbox but aside from some old screensaver apps I don't do much with it.

Win3.x is quite fun to play around with, though it's been a few years since I've used it for anything. It's got a specific "charm" to it that other versions of Windows seem to lack.

You can still use progman as the default shell for the retro feel in every Windows version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Manager

I found a copy of office 4.3 (last version natively supported in 3.x) while clearing out the server room, that was enough reason to install it.

Only load windows to copy files across the Lan, and even this can be done in dos really but I needed an excuse to keep it on.

I still use it in my 486 and on my Pentium systems along with DOS 6.22. Mostly for nostalgic sake, secondly, I do run some games and applications on it. Heck, I even still play Solitaire on it. Also there were some early adventure cd-rom games that were designed during the Windows 3.x era, and made use of it. Also, the numerous "multimedia" CDs that were quite the talk of town during the "multimedia explosion era" - a.k.a. the late 486/early Pentium days. These programs have the older classic Win 3.x styled icons and buttons and installation screens.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Windows 3.1 is neat. Even though it crashes a lot...

Use OS/2 instead. It has a Windows compatibility mode so you can still run all your Windows apps and it's a lot more stable.

This is actually the most "fun" I have had with a computer in a while. I found an old version of ACDSee (wish I had known about that back when I was actually using 3.1) as well as goldwave (ditto on that).

Kinda makes me wonder where is all the extra processing power going. Okay win95 had built-in networking and long filename support, but does that mean you need twice the computer to run it?

And I may be wrong about this... but it seems (to me) the Win3.1/early Win95era was the golden age of shareware....most of the shareware programs I used are from that era. Seems like that sort of thing has fallen to the wayside.

ncmark wrote:

Kinda makes me wonder where is all the extra processing power going.

You mentioned ACDSee... recent versions are excellent examples of rampant software bloat. It used to be a perfectly good image viewer before the devs caught featuritis - now it's a database-driven "library" program that can edit photos, play audio, create DVDs and publish to freakin' Tivo. You know, everything that's absolutely essential for an image viewer.

NEEDS MOAR FEATURES!

Yep - more and more I am coming to prefer OLDER versions.

I find myself wondering what would happen if I mailed in the order form for the older 3.1 version - would the honor it, or mail it back? 😁

lolo799 wrote:

You can still use progman as the default shell for the retro feel in every Windows version:

They even made it a choice in the original retail Win95 release IIRC