Wow, what an end of an era – on the 1st November 2008 Microsoft officially stopped issuing licenses for the software that made its debut in 1990.

I remember first using it in the early ’90s and I like the graphical interface but still preferred MS DOS as I felt I had more control over the system I think people using PC’s for the first time would have preffered the graphical user interface just because of the ease of use compared to using MS DOS.

I actually (bit embarrassing) used to think that they were competing companies… MS DOS vs MS Windows, it took me a while to realise they were the same company. Bare in mind I was only about 10 or 11 at the time.

Microsoft maintained support for Windows 3.x until the end of 2001 and since then it has lived on as en embedded operating system used mostly on some of the Virgin Atlantic and Quantas long haul flights to power the in-flight entertainment systems. I wonder why they used that to power their systems? Will have to look into it.

The Old specs on Windows 3.1 was the following