Timeline for What key factor led to the sudden commercial success of MS Windows with v3.0?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 28, 2019 at 21:37 | comment | added | cup | From what I remember, W1.0 and W2.11 were a Mac lookalikes. W3.0 had 3D buttons and some kind of memory protection that W2.0 didn't have. We had to deliver quite a big S/W suite in W2.11. It used to randomly crash - didn't figure it out until we ported to W3.0. W3.0 was cheap compared to OS/2 and WNT3.51. | |
| Jul 13, 2017 at 5:26 | comment | added | Bitbang3r | One thing that ended up being a SERIOUS limitation to widespread use of WinOS/2 (the mode that basically gave every running Windows app its own virtual instance of Windows) -- it pretty much REQUIRED 16mb to not suck, and right around the time OS/2 Warp came out, the price of RAM skyrocketed for a year or two. Making matters worse, most PCs had 8 SIMM slots, and most people who wanted to use WinOS/2 originally bought PCs with 8mb (8 x 1mb) of RAM. So you were hit with a double-whammy... you had to buy four expensive 4mb simms (~$800, if I recall) AND toss your original eight SIMMs. | |
| Mar 6, 2017 at 14:35 | comment | added | mschaef | @LuaanI don't know if it's completely fair to say they just mimicked Microsoft. OS/2 2.0 did contain things like the Workplace Shell and SOM that were novel IBM contributions. Where they dropped the ball is giving either ISV's or end users a reason to care. | |
| Mar 6, 2017 at 14:17 | comment | added | Luaan | @mschaef The fun part is that Microsoft used just that strategy to make everyone use MS-DOS/Windows - make all software run on our OS. The whole computer industry was a huge mess where any interoperability was a huge premium, and here comes MS OS that runs pretty much everything ("important enough"). OS is a platform, so you want the OS that runs the most applications; while everyone else was too busy vendor-locking, MS claimed the users by breaking those locks. OS/2 failed in a big part because IBM didn't understand what they were doing - they just mimicked MS, badly. | |
| Mar 6, 2017 at 14:13 | comment | added | Luaan | @BobJarvis To be fair, there were a few things that put Windows 1.0 down - not only did it have to run on extremely low-powered computers (thanks to IBM's business strategy), but it was also fraught with legal difficulties; a lot of the features had to be disabled or crippled because of infringement claims. But yeah, Windows 3.11 was the real winner for me - great networking (for the time), and a pretty good system overall, with decent applications. If only the application installers didn't insist on replacing system DLLs all the time, grah. | |
| Mar 5, 2017 at 22:57 | comment | added | mschaef | (I should point out that OS/2 did have a long life in certain niche applications... ATM's and dev workstations in some IBM mainframe development shops come to mind.) | |
| Mar 5, 2017 at 22:56 | comment | added | mschaef | OS/2 had the problem that by the time 2.0 rolled around, they were advertising it as a better Windows than Windows. For a while, they could actually achieve some of this promise, because the IBM/Microsoft joint development agreement gave them access to the Windows source. This let IBM bundle OS/2 with a custom version of Windows optimized to run under OS/2. Of course, the agreement ran out, and all IBM had really achieved was to undermine any motivation developers might have had to target OS/2. I think all those OS/2 versions accomplished was to advertise for Windows. | |
| Mar 5, 2017 at 4:10 | comment | added | Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні | My recollection is that Windows 1.0 (yes, I actually used it) was basically a really bad graphical shell for DOS. Windows 2.0 was marginally useful, and solved the memory and printing issues. Windows 3.0 was good enough to use, and Windows 3.1 was good enough that you didn't want to use anything else. I switched to OS/2 for a short period of time because it seemed like it would be a better platform - then switched back to Win 3.1 when it turned out it wasn't. | |
| Mar 3, 2017 at 21:39 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | It was the combination of the printer driver and proportional fonts that convinced me Windows was the future. | |
| Mar 3, 2017 at 15:31 | comment | added | mschaef | It's hard to overstate how much the printer support mattered... particularly if you had an oddball printer (like my family did in its Toshiba P321). | |
| Mar 2, 2017 at 22:31 | history | answered | snips-n-snails | CC BY-SA 3.0 |