Windows 3.1 rebooted: Microsoft's DOS destroyer turns 20

The Register ^ | 6 April 2012 | Tim Anderson

[Dr. Sivana]

Just imagine how much faster all of our programs would be if they had maintained the super-compact, very tightly written code instead of allowing them to become "bloatware."

Or if they used assembler, like the early versions of Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.

[freedumb2003]

Office 2010 is bloatware. Almost any and every app takes 5 minutes to load.

Try copying shapes from one app to another in shape form (something you could do through 2007) — it defaults to metafiles which suck.

I wanted to export an mppx to xlsx yesterday — by the time I was done answer all the “wizard” questions, 10 minutes had gone by and the guy I was doing it for just write down the information into a legal pad.

That is only the beginning of the list of suckeosity I can produce on request.

[dsrtsage]

“I still use the Cardfile program that came with Win 3.1. Believe it or not it works fine on XP.”

That’s kind of funny. There are so many apps that don’t work well with the never ending newer versions of windows. However, I was at one of our plants in Maryland recently, talking to the line manager. My eyes keep drifting to some charts and graphs on his desk. I finally can’t take it anymore and pick the reports up. Turns out they were reports generated from a program I had written for Windows 3.1 in 1993 in Borland Turbo C, while I was an engineer at a remote plant in Nevada. I was stunned, as it was running just dandy on windows 7. It was written in the days of dot matrix printers, and the charts and graphs were crisp and perfect printed on modern color printers. I have no idea where they got the program.

[freedumb2003]

>>Or if they used assembler,<<

Z-80 assembler! Man, I loved that one! Talk about the ability to do tight coding...

[GeronL]

“Aces over the Pascific”

lol, I wish!

I was still using “Tank” and then having to delete it to play a different game “Gunship 2000”.

I had like 100 MB total on that old Tandy 486SX, 25 mhz processor. I had to upgrade from about 2MB of RAM to 28MB and added a new soundcard and a new modem 33.6 kpbs.

I thought it was awesome at the time. I was poor, so by then everyone else was moving to the 90mhz Pentiums.

[lefty-lie-spy]

Nice flashback. I remember spending an entire day trying to get a mouse driver to work at the computer shop I worked at, and another guy working on EDSI graphics drivers, and another doing a Spinrite test on a gimped 40mb hard disk. Those were the days...the days I saved my cash to buy my first real computer from my earnings - a Mac //cx with a 40Mb hard disk and state of the art 1.44mb floppy disk drive. I actually bought a box of 10 floppies with my hard earned cash to get a box of those floppies and show off to my Sacramento MUPT friends that were doing the Atari Midi Maze gatherings.

Our Sacramento MUPTs were so awesome.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Office 2010 is bloatware. Almost any and every app takes 5 minutes to load.

You need to upgrade from your PII-400.

Heck, I’ve got an older corporate laptop and it does fine there. It is quite nice on my faster home machines.

[CORedneck]

Back in the day I liked Win 3.11 WFW since it worked with the Internet including web browsers. Also backing up the hard drive was simple since there was no extended file-names yet. But with the extended file-names, it is painful to do a backup. Usually if the drive goes out, this entails having to reload the software instead of a simple restore from tape.

I have a VM Ware drive setup w/ DOS 6.22 and Win 3.11 WFW. I have it set with Netscape 1.0 where it runs, the “N” is like a beating heart !

[RJS1950]

Man, the VB 1.0 screen brought back memories. I purchased VB 1.0 the week it was released. It was part of the beginning of the visual development paradigm and spread quickly. I was truly amazed at how quickly I could develop applications and it was capable of far more than it was rated to do. A contractor I worked with used VB 1.0 to develop a very sophisticated LAN sniffer application and another app that captured and collected raw satellite feeds for display and manipulation. He did all of this in just five days time from the day we installed the package. I still have a box stored away that has Win 3.1 and VB 1.0 on it. I wish I had the time to drag it out and fire it up again.

[cuban leaf]

I’ve been using Visio and Word since the mid-1980’s. I can only say that after my initial frustration with this being a significant change in the user interface, I went from hating it to loving it.

Maybe it’s just me.

[GeronL]

I had Netscape 1.22!!

[dangerdoc]

I find the combination of Windows 7 and Office 97 to be excellent.

I bought Office 97 with a student discount and have installed it on every operating system since then. Win 7 is the most stable so far. I am dreading the day when it won’t install on a new OS. I do have a copy of Office 2003 stashed for that eventuality.

[freedumb2003]

>>You need to upgrade from your PII-400.<<

Sometimes it seems like I have a TRS-80 and am loading from a cassette tape.

I have a corporate-issued fully-loaded Dell E4310 — memory at max (4G), plenty of available disk, math co-processor, bitslice enabled, DOS partition set at 64K, FAT turned on (OK, all the last are just old Windows jokes)...

But it is the latest and greatest and Office 2010 still drags it down lower than moochele at a Hawaiian buffet.

[CodeToad]

I still have copies of Windows and VB in shrink wrap. I’ll take what we have today over all that but it sure was fun and interesting times. I probably made more money and had better times then than I do now. Then it felt new and exciting while today things are serious and, well, boring.

[Abby4116]

I have not been able to install Office 97 on either vista or win 7. I got a error message saying it was not supported.

But my Word Perfect 8 runs very well on them.

[GonzoGOP]

I ain’t a mac guy but if anything would drive me into the dead arms of Jobs, it is the latest incarnation of all the Windows products.

If you are going to sacrifice using Windows software and don't mind playing with your PC to get it running smoothly try PCLinux or LinuxMint. Both install easily and "usually" run well out of the box. And since they don't cost anything you can try both to see which one works better. Both present a Windows like environment. Being lighter on hardware than Vista or W7 you can run them on older hardware and still have a good web browsing machine. I used PCLinux to turn parts from a couple of old (2003 vintage) desktops into multimedia machine for my living room. For browsing and watching web videos it runs as fast as my wife's vista laptop, and the menus are easier to use.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Too funny. Technology truly has made the world a much smaller place in many ways.

You should have jacked him up for a fiver for the rights to use it.

=;^)

[Signalman]

Windows 3.1 was not a true operating system (OS) It was an “operating environment” containing a graphical user interface (GUI), which sat on top of DOS, making it easier for the human user to interface with the computer. DOS still performed the underlying functions of the OS.

Windows 95 was the first true non-DOS Microsoft OS.

[dangerdoc]

I’m trying to remember whether it was XP or Vista, Office 97 loaded fine but would tell me there was a problem with one of the files when I started the program. Closing the error box and moving on never seemed to be an issue, it ran fine despite the warning.

I’m running Office 97 at home on Win 7 with no problems.

Have you removed the trial version of Office on your computer?

[freedumb2003]

Linux is cool b/c the older your hardware, the better it runs.

But my HW is corporate-issued and I like to keep my home machines compatible for a lot of practical reasons.

When I am ready to retire the desktop at home I will probably install Linux, which is a great OS that I loved working with (I am a secret overnight shell scripter).