Windows 3.1 was released April the 6th 1992. Windows 3.1 is a 16-bits operating system, produced of course by Microsoft for use on Personal Computers.
Windows 3.1 was also the last in the DOS Series. Windows 95-98 and 2000 used the the Windows 95 kernel (it’s underlying foundation is MS-Dos)
Windows 3.1 download and Windows 3.11 download
Windows 3.1 is not officialy distrubted anymore, however if you have a Microsoft MSDN account you can download Windows 3.11
However if you know how to use Google, it won’t be hard to find a download 🙂
Taking a Look at Windows 3.1
What was so special in this release?
Windows 3.1 brought some great things to the Microsoft Windows Platform, but what precisely did it bring? We summed up feature that were introduced that on this day and in the upcoming Windows 10 release are still beign used!
- Support for more sorts of Multimedia like MIDI and CDs
- TrueType fonts
- Workgroup networking
- Windows for Pen Computering (Yes… Sort of touchscreens)
- Program Manager (Deprecated after Windows XP’
- Super-VGA (800*600)
- Introduction of CTRL+ALT+DELETE
Highlighted Software
I took some programs that were used a lot in the time that Windows 3.1 was popular and will show them below.
Write
You had two options in Windows 3.1 to write documents (actually 3 but let’s leave notepad out of this) that was MS-Dos editor and Write. Write was a sort of early Microsoft Office Word and offered all the features you need while writing a basic document
- Fonts
- Superscript
- Subscript
- Bold
- Italic
- Underline
- Align Center
- Align Left
- Align Right
- Save and Open
MS-Dos Editor
Typing a letter in the age of Windows 3.1 wasn´t as easy as it is today, it required a lot more work and after you finished your document or book, it didn´t even look very nice. Here is how it looked to make a document in Windows 3.1
However, the main features someone needs when writing a letter, book or something is the option to save and print the document, Windows 3.1 of course supported this feature.
Calculator
The calculator that was installed by default in Wind0ws 3.1 is almost the same as we still use today, however it only supported two modes; Standard and Scientific. Can you see the differences? Yes there are quite many but the features are almost the same!
Microsoft Anti-Virus
Virussed is not something new and Windows 3.1 had it own Virus Scanner, Yes a virus scanner. It had two buttons: Detect and Decect and Clean. The first button allowed you to view which files it found to make sure nothing important got deleted. The second one just finds and kill them without asking.
