Old Li2-Crystals

Welcome back!

Back in in May of 1990 the world saw the birth of a new operating system that was to define a lot about how we look at computers. The Windows 3.x OS was one of the first widely accepted and used operating system and gave Microsoft it's push into a leading position in the software world.

Now, as of November 1st, 2008 Microsoft has stopped issuing licenses for the operating system that it's big start came from.

Surprisingly, there actually still are people using Windows 3.x. For a long time, even into recent years, it has been used on some cash registers and as an embedded operating system running the in-flight entertainment systems on some Virgin and Qantas long-haul jets.

I remember those days, running Windows 3.x, back when there were things like Geoworks that were still showing up as the embedded OS on new computers. Then by 1993 or so, Windows was suddenly the most popular operating system around. It started showing up bundled on more and more computers than any of it's would be competitors. When Windows 95 came out, for the most part the likes of Geoworks rolled over and died.

While it was still quirky as all get out, that early version of Windows had a lot of advantages. For one thing, you didn't have to dance around too much to get it to live up to it's claim of being 100% compatible with DOS applications that almost everybody was still using.

Now, Windows 3 is officially deader than ever (though many will continue to use it in specialized applications). Surely 95 can't be more than a few years behind 3.x. '98 will hang on for a good long time yet because it's still very useful for a lot of things, especially if you've got some legacy software out there that doesn't understand XP, Vista or NTFS file systems. XP will be around LONG past whatever Microsoft has to say about it because there's a lot of people that are seriously bent out of shape about Vista.

As for Vista, Well, nobody honestly gives a dead rat's @$$ about Vista. Vista will likely sit there and rot, a putrid, vile mess. Vista is the reason many people will either return to XP or move to Ubuntu when they get tired of Vista infecting their computers.

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