The thing I remember about the win 3.1 release was... It made the news... the regular news, TV news, newspaper news... it was not the main story by any means but it wasn't a "by the way" on a business or tech report section, or the "happenings around the country/world" thing that gets 30 seconds in the 2nd or 3rd segment, it was a full news story.
Up until that time, I don't recall any software release or new computer hardware making the regular news this strongly. The one exception was the Apple 1984 superbowl ad, but they were talking about the ad, without the ad they would not have mentioned the Mac, like the publicity made a splash but not the existence of the machine. I think there were stories about the industry as a whole, like the video game crash, and reporter editorials about what the kids are into these days, panic pieces about the evils of video parlors and other nonsense.
I am talking about mainstream, general public, consciousness of these things happening, for a single company's particular product. It broke through.
Next month, it was all over the covers of tech mags and periodicals, thus it was somewhat embarrassing for a tech geek at the time, because ppl were asking you about it, because it was on "the news" but your source of deeper information ran a month behind that. There hadn't been much fanfare and pre-hype, and if there was you might have ignored it, it's just a bit of an update after all.
Anyway, I remember it as kind of breaking the floodgates into the mainstream for tech and software industry news. It was on the fringes until then. Definitely paved the way for that 2 or 3 months of "Couldn't stop hearing about Windows 95" media binge 3 years later.
3.0 was still overcoming the reputation of needing an expensive, loaded up, machine to run it well as it had at release. However by 1992, intel had real competition, 386 machines were diving under $1000, Compaq kicked off the 486 price war mid/late year. So 3.1 hit the sweet spot, to make for a consumer usable point and drool computer that was just about affordable.... and we were off... the confluence of things in 1992 was the start of PCs for everyone.
Stop random ppl in the street and ask "Name a version of microsoft windows from last century" and Win 95 and 98 will be top right answer scores, but Win 3.1 will be third. To the wider world, 3.1 was the first windows version that "mattered".
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
