- Tuesday, 1 December 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
The dross always floats to the top in IT companies - A tall Scandinavian
Microsoft finally kills Windows 3
MICROSOFT STOPPED publishing licences for Windows 3.X as of November 1st, finally discontinuing its first successful mass-market graphical PC operating system, which had straggled* along for over 18 years.
The Vole released the initial version of Windows 3.0 in May 1990 and set the pattern early for its business model of repeatedly extracting more revenue from customers for essentially the same software by churning out several point-release versions with bug-fixes and small improvements in subsequent years, culminating with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, which added basic LAN networking, and Windows 3.2 with Simplified Chinese language support.
The company discontinued further maintenance support of Windows 3.X at the end of 2001, but it was still used as an embedded operating system up until now. Business applications it supported included point-of-sale cash registers, banking ATMs and ticket printing systems.
Embedded computers running Windows 3.X still drive the inflight entertainment systems on some aging Boeing 747s flown by Virgin and Qantas airways, according to the BBC. Those systems will likely be transitioned to newer hardware running embedded Linux, we imagine.
Windows 3.X was basically just a layer of windowing software that Microsoft overlayed on Bill Gates' ripoff of the command-line clone of CP/M, 86-DOS, that he renamed as MS-DOS.
It ran almost reliably, as long as one didn't ask it to chew gum and walk at the same time, mostly because it used clunky 'co-operative multitasking' round-robin program scheduling.
Hardware interfaces setup and memory management were handled statically at boot time and required third-party add-on software in order to accomodate persistent auxiliary tasks.
Microsoft eventually improved on those early 'features' of Windows 3.X, but Windows still ran on top of DOS all the way up through Windows 98 and Windows ME, and some might claim that the Vole's more recent operating systems are still running on DOS underneath.
But it ran on the primitive hardware that was available at the time it came out, with early versions needing only an Intel 8086/8088 processor running at 10MHz or better, 640KB or more of RAM, only seven megabytes of disk space and a CGA, EGA or VGA graphics card.
Yet it's the end of an era, we guess, though we don't recall it with any fondness. Shudder. µ
L'Inq
BBC
*INQism. Verb (past): conjunction of dragged and struggled
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
round robin is a pre-emptive multitasking scheduling algorithm, you can't mix it with the notion of cooperative multitasking.
Means to have fallen behind, you really should have used draggled as your new Inq'ism.

Efros
Ahh, Win3.11 an a sweet Acerpower, the first computer I owned from new! 4 megs of memory, 500 meg hard drive. Man, it was spec'd for the time but as INQ also felt, I don't really have any fondness for this old OS. While I may have a working copy of Win3.11 running in VMWare, I've long since abandoned Windows as a primary OS.
I kinda thought that straggled meant:

strag⋅gle /ˈstrægəl/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [strag-uhl] Show IPA Pronunciation 

–verb (used without object), -gled, -gling. 1. to stray from the road, course, or line of march. 
2. to wander about in a scattered fashion; ramble. 
3. to spread or be spread in a scattered fashion or at irregular intervals: The trees straggle over the countryside. 
(www.dictionary.com)
"some might claim that ... recent operating systems are still running on DOS ...."

Some might claim that theinq is a serious news source too. Baloney to both.

Because they made a command line which accepts most of the same syntax as DOS, its just DOS is it?
As others have pointed out, "straggle" is already a word in the English language. Making stuff up is fine -- just let us know that you're kidding.

There have been other examples of this kind of error: "helicoptering" used to mean spinning round in the playground going "dugga-dugga-dugga". Imagine helicoptering someone after they just survived an earthquake! Poor things.

Another word that the BBC tried to redefine was "gazunder", which they used to refer to the questionable activity of renegotiating a property price downwards after the sale had been arranged. But a gazunder is a chamber pot, and "gazundering" would therefore be taking a dump.

The word "emergency" should be used to refer to *emerging* from one branch of WH Smith's or Tesco's and thinking you're in one town, but then you *see* that you're somewhere else.

But yes, "straggle", from Middle English "straglen", to wander. Possibly from a Scandinavian source, like Norwegian "stragla", to walk laboriously; or as a frequentive of "straken", to move, to go.

Besides, "conjunction"? Don't you mean "portmanteau"?
Aaah, the early ancestor to the dog poo we are served up by Micro$oft today.

At least Vista crashes faster....
... but it's a real word and has been around a whole lot longer than you brain surgeons.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/straggled



Main Entry:
1strag·gle Listen to the pronunciation of 1straggle
Pronunciation:
\ˈstra-gəl\ 
Function:
intransitive verb 
Inflected Form(s):
strag·gled; strag·gling Listen to the pronunciation of straggling \-g(ə-)liŋ\ 
Etymology:
Middle English straglen
Date:
15th century

1 : to wander from the direct course or way : rove , stray 2 : to trail off from others of its kind <little cabins straggling off into the woods>
— strag·gler Listen to the pronunciation of straggler \-g(ə-)lər\ noun

And btw, don't worry about this comment being one of many you've chosen not to published ... you just read it.
Those Windows 3.x days sure were memorable. I recall the QEMM memory "manager" that would calculate out all possible driver loading scenarios to eek out 2 or so kilobytes of RAM for the "conventional RAM" portion.

And there was SideKick! And all of those other poorly coded TSRs. You never knew why stuff crashed.

RIP, Windows 3.x. It wasn't a good time, but it was truly memorable.