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Forget About XP: Let's Save Windows for Workgroups 3.11!

VNU Net reports on a tragic loss:

Microsoft has announced plans to kill off Windows for Workgroups (WFW) 3.11 just weeks after ending the sale of Windows XP to consumers.

WFW has been unavailable to consumers for many years but certain software is licensed for use in embedded devices for much longer.

But a Microsoft employee has now revealed that it will be discontinued from 1 November 2008.

"For those that were not aware, we recently announced that effective November 1st 2008 OEMs will no longer be able to license WFW 3.11 in the embedded channel," said John Coyne, of Microsoft's OEM Embedded devices group, in his blog.

"We all know that it's been long gone in the standard (retail/OEM) channel, but one of the unique things in the embedded business is that we allow the classic OS products to be sold longer than the other channels. It's finally the end of an era."

WFW was initially released in November 1993 as the final English language operating system before Windows 95 ... It was the first Microsoft operating system to require the use of a 386 processor, along with 3Mb of RAM.

I'm waiting for the InfoWorld petition, of course.

I made a graphic to help them get started:

 

:)

Published Jul 11 2008, 01:47 PM by pthurrott
Filed under: , ,

Comments

 

Windows 3.11 almost gone | Kirb's Musings said:

Pingback from  Windows 3.11 almost gone | Kirb's Musings

July 11, 2008 12:35 PM
 

Dipsh t Admin said:

Good one, Paul!  I guess this means that 9x is still running on some embedded devices somewhere, and that we will have a save Windows 9x and ME petition soon enough ;)

July 11, 2008 12:45 PM
 

meason said:

I await the "SAVE MICROSOFT BOB" Campaign myself.....

July 11, 2008 1:06 PM
 

FlyerMike said:

@meason

Can't really save Bob, he's been dead for years now.  Not even sure if he was ever really here :)

July 11, 2008 1:29 PM
 

nmg82 said:

good stuff!

July 11, 2008 2:11 PM
 

meason said:

@FlyerMike

oh I bet someone out there is still using BOB :)  Let me go check to see if its in my msdn subscription

July 11, 2008 2:39 PM
 

BrightrevCarl said:

That graphic is AWESOME and so appropriate for the occasion.  You know you can run Windows 3.1 in 4 MB of RAM, right?  I could run 500 copies of it SIMULTANEOUSLY on my PC.  Where do I sign up?

July 11, 2008 2:53 PM
 

Joshu4 said:

Clippit died in office 2003, which is almost too bad. i kinda liked the thing.

July 11, 2008 5:09 PM
 

subzerohitman721 said:

Perhaps Microsoft should save some of the more classic Windows in a tribute disk. Call it the "Windows: The Legacy." Bundle in this DVD all of the recent Windows versions for legacy computers. The bundle would include DOS, Windows 1, 2, 3, 95 and 98 in a tribute pack. Especially with Hyper V, Virtual PC, or VMware, so that you can show people how we used to do things. That way those ancient computers willl still have an OS. I think that would be a fitting tribute.

July 11, 2008 7:51 PM
 

ajgelado said:

BrightrevCarl, Windows 3.1 was able to run with as little as 1 Mb of RAM. Windows 3.11 for Workgroups required 2 Mb, and Windows 95 received many critics for requiring 4 Mb! Of course, these figures were as realistic as the 128 Mb minimum for Windows XP - the system would boot fine, but it would start crawling as soon as you opened an application. Anyway, this means you could actually run 2000 (two-thousand) copies of Windows 3.1 in your machine! ;-)

July 11, 2008 11:00 PM
 

Dipsh t Admin said:

"Anyway, this means you could actually run 2000 (two-thousand) copies of Windows 3.1 in your machine! ;-)"

Correction, 2048! (assuming no overhead of course)  ;)

July 12, 2008 12:37 AM
 

beaker said:

This is terrible!!!! How can we allow them to discontinue the best version of Windows??  

OMG!

:)

July 12, 2008 6:41 AM
 

Waethorn said:

"as realistic as the 128 Mb minimum for Windows XP"

Actually, it's only 64MB.  At least, that's what it was when it was first released.  The *recommended* amount at that time was 128MB.  It would also install on a 233MHz CPU.

Since then, I believe they've updated the RAM requirement to 128MB with 256MB being the recommended amount.  I think that was SP1 or SP2 when they changed it.  

I say to anyone with 256MB that current antivirus software is too slow on that amount, and recommend they upgrade to 512MB at the very least (especially since RAM is very cheap now).  Obviously, more is better though.  512MB works fine for browsing and "regular" home use, but multimedia and light gaming requires 1GB.  High-end gaming should have 2GB.  I tell people to double those numbers for Vista (and use x64 whenever possible).  New computer shoppers will get Vista anyway, and since systems are so cheap now, it's pretty easy to get a system with 4GB of RAM.  Gateway has even started moving many of its consumer lines over to the x64 versions of Vista Home Premium too.  Now with Vista SP1, it seems the best time to get a head start on x64.  The x64 SP1 versions seem to be getting the highest application benchmark scores too (even over XP SP2/SP3).

July 12, 2008 10:52 AM

About pthurrott

Paul Thurrott is the guy behind the SuperSite for Windows. Way behind. :)
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