We'll miss ya, li'l buddy.

*sniffle*

Nah, just kidding. Get lost already.

windows certainly has a lot of critics but i will remember 3.1 with affection as the first O.S. i ever truly dabbled with and its been amusing to know the old war horse has still been battling on for nearly 20 years

kudos to my first OS

Goodbye dear friend, you will surely be missed.

Finally it's joining the ranks of OS/2 2.x.

Personally I can't see how it could be used for in-flight multimedia systems, that is unless there's either a Win32s or 16-bit multimedia player available?

(Somehow I bet there is somewhere!).

I'm half tempted to bang it on my P3-750 Stinkpad and see how well it runs.

Rob

I was sure that was right for Windows 3.0, but for 3.1 onwards required Real Mode which was only available on 80286 onwards, and only 80386 onwards could switch into and out off real mode, so Win 3.1 onwards would refuse to run on anything less than a '386. (Shame; had to stick with Win 3.0 on my Zenith databook laptop complete with black & white CGA screen...)

It's Ok gov, I can make my own way to the door...

When my terminal crashed on a Virgin flight a few years ago, I was treated to a little penguin logo during the reboot - not Win3.11...

Goodbye then, Windows 3.

You weren't my first brush with Microsoft

But I installed enough of it.

What will they use now

To run with?

Vista?

<shudder>

With apologies to E.J. Thribb.

"Virgin and Qantas have both been known to use the OS to power some of their in-flight entertainment systems for long-haul flights."

On first reading of this sentence I missed the word "entertainment", which was more than a little unnerving!

So long, Windows 3.11. I'll miss you. :-)

Ah yes, I remember it well.

It used to take under 10 seconds to boot up after the POST beep on a 486DX50. Despite all the promises of improved speed over the subsequent years, nothing that followed it has ever come close.

And it used to run a treat under good old OS/2 Warp.

Tux, because I'm never going back to the dark side.

I cut my teching teeth on WfW; it was an easy interface to hack around: notepad was all that was required, with a little bit of patience you could customise the little tinker to your heart's content through pif and ini files. True it was driver hell with new "improved" hardware, p2p was an interesting experience, especially getting users to remember which PC to boot up first. But when coupled with Novell 3.11 it was a fine piece of kit (sssh, I'm trying to forget about networked printer management) but I have very fond memories of the blighter.

Bon voyage WfW as you begin you journey to software heaven. The coat's for WfW not me, and I hope that's faux-mink lined.

sob sob sob.

SEVEN megabytes of disk? COLOR Graphics Adapter? Those mad bastards over in Redmond have really pushed it this time, these computer requirements are nothing short of bloatware!

It it won't run on my PC-AT in 80-column monochrome, then it's crap.

What about BOB???

In many ways Windows 3.1/3.11 was better than anything that came afterwards from Microsoft.

If copying multiple files with 3.1;s File Manager there was a problem, such the a source or destination files was open, it would warn you about it and allow you to continue copying the rest of the files. Win95 File Manager and all that follow, just abort the entire process with half the files copied, forcing you to find the culprit, exclude it, and copy everything again.

If you had an iconised application window in 3.1 would allow you to drop a file on top it, and the file would be loaded in to that window. In Win95 and later you can't drop files on to the taskbar icons, you get an error box telling to go through the utterly ridiculous palather of hovering over the icon mid drag, waiting an age for the window to deiconise, then dropping the file on to it - why for fucks sake?

Such is progress when it comes to the worlds worst operating system.

WFW 3.11 and Opus - put to bed for the final time this week. :-(

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JbvUx5fH9As

The Star Trek Experience (Borg and Klingon "rides") at the Las Vegas Hilton were all run on Windows 3.11 (according to the "behind the scenes tour). They had tried to upgrade, but systems kept crashing. They had stockpiled the older hardware as backup spares. Of course, the "Star Trek Experience" was closed on September 1, 2008 after more than a decade of fun. Luckily, I got see it all before it died.....

Go on Redmond - give openWindows 3.11 to sourceforge :)

But it annoyed me when it failed to run on my Amstrad 2086 :(

I'll miss it.

Still runs like a cat on fire on my Athlon X2. I have never seen an OS (MS-DOS 6.22) and a GUI shell (Win3.11) load this quickly before...

You'll be missed. :-)

Why a picture of the German start up screen? Or has it always been "Windows für Workgroups"

Always find it bizarre how they can withdraw a product from sale. I'd quite like to buy a copy of XP for an old machine that I know won't run Vista, but can't buy it from MS anymore and so have to resort to the bay of pirates...

Amazed they don't just flog it for peanuts and turn it into a cash cow.

I am not alone ! There are others out there with fond memories of Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.20. Was this Microsoft's last stable operating system ?

If anyone out there still has a flopppy disc drive, I think I have an installation copy of 3.11 in the back of the cupboard somewhere - all 22 floppy discs ( was it 22 ? ). Any offers ?

Alas, poor 3.11, I knew him well.

Good night 3.11, you served us well...

Does anybody have a link to a patch archive for Windows 3.1, something like an AutoPatcher collection?

This stuff will disappear if it isn't archived.

Shouldn't it have been called "Windows für Arbeitgruppen" then?

… Bin ich mit Anonymem Feigling. Was ist oben mit dem screenshot?

Now I make no bones about my feelings for MS or Windows and have thus participated in my fair share of flame wars. However making cogent and reasonable statements such as "And sod the juvenile OS wars once and for all." just will not do. You should report to the nearest IT re-education center to have the (win, linux, free, apple, os2, etc)-tard trigger implanted back into your brain at once.

I admit, I still have a running setup that boots into WfW3.11, primarily for running games that my x64 gaming rig and Windows 9x/XP won't run, and I even have one or two games that are so picky that even Win9x won't do. And yeah, on a Pentium 2-266 Machine with 128MB of RAM (exploited using DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS) and a 5400RPM Quantum hard disk, it has a boot speed that would even put flash ROM devices to shame.

Reg tombstone, as a honor for one of the finest gui shell/extenders out there.

They aren't making any money. Things needing WfW3.11 will NEVER impinge upon Vista sales.

So why kill it off?

I thought that copyright was to enrich the public domain. How will a deletion of all source code in the MS vaults help enrich the PD?

WE have paid for copyright by the removal of our rights. When are we going to get paid back for our grace by MS?

You can go out and by as many copies of XP as you want. They haven't stopped selling it yet. They even udated the install discs to SP3.

retired his trusty 486 PC running WFW 3.11 just this year. It had to happen as he couldn't get printer ribbons any more! With Word an a Golf game, even Sol, it did everything he needed.