Precursor to M.S. Windows ???

[Nusa]

Yeah there was windows 3.1, and WFW 3.1
as well as Windows 3.11 and WFW 3.11


I can't even remember what the 3.11 patch was for anymore but I'm wondering of the issue was found when used in workgroups so the association of 3.11 with WFW.

Windows 3.11 was almost entirely bug fixes, and was a free update for anyone that owned Windows 3.1  They would call that sort of thing a service pack these days.

WFW 3.1 was basically Windows 3.1 with network support included, using SMB and NetBIOS.

WFW 3.11 was bug fixes, but it also added 32-bit features and had a minimum 386 CPU requirement.

For all of the above, if you wanted TCP/IP support you needed to add a winsock package. Most people used 3rd-party winsock solutions that were available much earlier than the Microsoft solution that only worked on WFW 3.11 because it used 32-bit features.

And, of course, all of the above got replaced by Windows 95 when it came out. And Windows 98 after that. And finally Windows 2000 ME, which was the last of the DOS-based windows that most people considered worse than Windows 98.

[rsjsouza]

Back in the day I only saw Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the wild. Plain Windows 3.11 was not seen around where I lived.

Wikipedia to the rescue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_3.1x

I've been working to bring back to a healthy life an old Toshiba T2000SX laptop and, during the process and with the help of a CF to IDE adapter, I was able to create and install both DSO6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on a 256MB CF card. Quite the trip down memory lane...

[rrinker]

Windows 2000 and Windows ME were two completely different things. 2000 was NT based, ME was an update to 98 and still DOS based. 2000 Workstation was not bad at all. I don't remember if I had 95 or 98 on my computer when I upgraded it to 2000. I never ran a machine with ME. I always had a second one in the Win 3.1 and 95 days running NT, 3.1 then 3.5, 3.51, and finally 4.0, but too many things wouldn;t run well or at all, so I always had that DOS/95 machine available.

[ebastler]

For all of the above, if you wanted TCP/IP support you needed to add a winsock package. Most people used 3rd-party winsock solutions that were available much earlier than the Microsoft solution

Oh yes, that brings back memories! "Trumpet Winsock", anyone? 

Prompted by your post, I just Googled that name and found a page where you can donate to the author, who did not see much income from this very popular piece of software in the early 90s: https://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/

[xmetal]

Windows 2000 and Windows ME were two completely different things. 2000 was NT based, ME was an update to 98 and still DOS based. 2000 Workstation was not bad at all. I don't remember if I had 95 or 98 on my computer when I upgraded it to 2000. I never ran a machine with ME. I always had a second one in the Win 3.1 and 95 days running NT, 3.1 then 3.5, 3.51, and finally 4.0, but too many things wouldn;t run well or at all, so I always had that DOS/95 machine available.

I remember I later had the Windows 95c version which had USB support and the version of 98 I got was Windows 98SE (Second Edition).

[eugenenine]

Windows 2000 was the last good Microsoft OS.  XP took 2000 and forced IE into it and moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

[rsjsouza]

Windows 2000 was the last good Microsoft OS.  XP took 2000 and forced IE into it and moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

I disagree. Moving from Windows 2000 to XP reduced the boot time by a factor of 10x, which was a very good benefit for my role as a road warrior on my PIII Dell laptop. Stability was about the same and compatibility with high speed graphics for non linear video editing was a very welcome addition.

Sure, Windows 2000 was a quantum leap in stability when compared to the former "desktop OSes" 95 thru 98SE, but it required an equivalent quantum leap in hardware. IMO far from the best OS from Redmondland.

Years earlier, a similar quantum leap was the introduction of DrDOS 5 (not Microsoft) and its much better usage of the upper memory area - especially after the Microsoft's 4.0 fiasco.

[Nusa]

Windows 2000 and Windows ME were two completely different things. 2000 was NT based, ME was an update to 98 and still DOS based. 2000 Workstation was not bad at all. I don't remember if I had 95 or 98 on my computer when I upgraded it to 2000. I never ran a machine with ME. I always had a second one in the Win 3.1 and 95 days running NT, 3.1 then 3.5, 3.51, and finally 4.0, but too many things wouldn;t run well or at all, so I always had that DOS/95 machine available.

I know that. Back when it was actively being marketed, it was commonly called Windows 2000 ME. So common that you couldn't say Windows 2000 by itself without being ambiguous. I suspect a deliberate choice by marketing people to convince consumers that it was just as good as Windows 2000 Professional they might have heard good things about. Probably combined with some genuine confusion among reviewers about the distinction between the consumer and the corporate path.

NT came in Workstation and Server version. Windows 2000 came in Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter versions. So no such thing as Windows 2000 Workstation. But I get your meaning. Yes, it was a great OS. I used Windows 2000 Pro on my 2-processor work machine for years, and on my home machine even longer (with a dual-boot to Win98se for certain games). So long I went straight to Windows 7 when I replaced the hardware. And I'm still on Windows 7.

[NivagSwerdna]

 When looking at windowing environments you also need to consider the hardware in the evolution...
Windowing on Xerox Alto etc. was where the initial ideas came from (spent many happy hours programming Dandelions in MESA) but the roll out of graphics to PCs came a lot later. Graphics cards and monitors were very expensive.
As for Windows... The first version that was useable was 3.1, before that it was too unstable, and really it wasn't until Windows NT 3.51 that it became a proper platform and thereafter the days of the mini/mainframe were thankfully numbered.
(A good chunk of OS/2 PM was written in the UK and not by Microsoft)

[eugenenine]

Windows 2000 was the last good Microsoft OS.  XP took 2000 and forced IE into it and moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

I disagree. Moving from Windows 2000 to XP reduced the boot time by a factor of 10x, which was a very good benefit for my role as a road warrior on my PIII Dell laptop. Stability was about the same and compatibility with high speed graphics for non linear video editing was a very welcome addition.

Sure, Windows 2000 was a quantum leap in stability when compared to the former "desktop OSes" 95 thru 98SE, but it required an equivalent quantum leap in hardware. IMO far from the best OS from Redmondland.

Years earlier, a similar quantum leap was the introduction of DrDOS 5 (not Microsoft) and its much better usage of the upper memory area - especially after the Microsoft's 4.0 fiasco.

XP simply moved the login screen earlier so yes it booted to login faster but after that you got to watch the hard disk blink while you tried to work as it kept starting other services as you were logging in.  I could get older slower hardware to boot to usable 2000 faster than newer faster hardware with XP.

XP fubar'ed the IRDA file transfer (OBEX) so my HP capshare quit working and if you tried between 2000 and XP you had to retry twice.
XP messed up USB to where it would occasionally create duplicate USB storage devices requiring manual clean up
XP removed support for the 'swappiness' (using the linux term here since I can't recall what the reg key was called) so with VMware workstation or Player where I could run 4 guests at a time the same hardware with XP could only run 2 because it kept trying to swap them.  I had to double ram and add a separate small drive for swap to get the same performance.
XP/2003 server introduced a bug into typeperf where you would get negative cpu usage % numbers if you used a wildcard (microsoft issued a refuse to fix, use this workaround instead for my case)
XP embedded would not work from a read only drive where 2000embedded would.
The move of video and other user processes to a lower ring made XP/2003 less secure because it was easier to get malware in.
And of course the worse, forced integration of IE to win the court case so now you had a huge security hole that existed for years making it extremely easy for anyone and their brother, monkey, dog or cat to infect systems.

Windows 2000 IE/OE were optional you could install them if you wanted and yes, you could actually remove them though it was easier and quicker to just reinstall but xp was when they really integrated the two to make the huge hole risk IE was and even made some later XP/2003 patches refuse to install if the outhouse express .exe had been deleted (and WFP db edited to prevent the OS from putting it back of course) even if said patches were unrelated to IE/OE.

Many say SP2 was a lot better but by that time I had given up on XP myself and was no longer involved in anything desktop support related so I'm only familiar with the server 2003 issues such as typeperf, TCPChimney,  etc.

[eugenenine]

I know that. Back when it was actively being marketed, it was commonly called Windows 2000 ME. So common that you couldn't say Windows 2000 by itself without being ambiguous. I suspect a deliberate choice by marketing people to convince consumers that it was just as good as Windows 2000 Professional they might have heard good things about. Probably combined with some genuine confusion among reviewers about the distinction between the consumer and the corporate path.

It was never marketed as 2000 ME, 2000 was marked as the next NT (what was speculated to be NT5) and ME was the successor to 98.  Maybe you saw something like " use the latest Microsoft OS such as 2000 and/or ME" but never 2000ME.  I was running the early technet beta or 2000 for over a year before the release.

around 1998 or so Microsoft's roadmap was to merge the 9x and NT products together but when that was delayed they polished NT and release it as 2000 and threw some crap on top of 98 and release it as ME and then pushed the product line unification back and finally released it as XP.

[coppice]

I know that. Back when it was actively being marketed, it was commonly called Windows 2000 ME. So common that you couldn't say Windows 2000 by itself without being ambiguous. I suspect a deliberate choice by marketing people to convince consumers that it was just as good as Windows 2000 Professional they might have heard good things about. Probably combined with some genuine confusion among reviewers about the distinction between the consumer and the corporate path.

It was never marketed as 2000 ME, 2000 was marked as the next NT (what was speculated to be NT5) and ME was the successor to 98.  Maybe you saw something like " use the latest Microsoft OS such as 2000 and/or ME" but never 2000ME.  I was running the early technet beta or 2000 for over a year before the release.

around 1998 or so Microsoft's roadmap was to merge the 9x and NT products together but when that was delayed they polished NT and release it as 2000 and threw some crap on top of 98 and release it as ME and then pushed the product line unification back and finally released it as XP.

What they marketed was that ME was supposed to be a transitional step towards the NT platform. They put a number of features from NT into ME, in a half hearted way. I guess they felt pressure to offer consumers something that looked like a refresh over 98 second edition. It was a horrible botch, though.

[eugenenine]

Yes, it was like if you took 98 and went to microsoft's web site and downloaded anything and everything you could find for it, resource kits, add ons, beta software, etc.  it was just a bunch of stuff piled on top.

Xp was similar though, take 2000, add in IE, OE, .net, etc.

[SiliconWizard]

At the time, after Windows 3.11, I upgraded to Win95. It was not the most stable thing, but it was a huge improvement in so many ways still: a preemptive scheduler (one of the biggest plusses), a modern GUI, and many other things. So let's give it some credit...

Then I switched to Win NT 4 workstation. Now THAT was a decent OS. It was lacking USB support though, and so when Win2000 was released, I switched to it almost instantly. To me it was as stable as Win NT 4 (same kernel and same of many other things), supported USB and looked more modern.

I never installed XP on any of my own machines. After Win2000, I upgraded to Win2003 (it was easy to configure it for workstation use). And finally, Windows 7.

[rsjsouza]

XP simply moved the login screen earlier so yes it booted to login faster but after that you got to watch the hard disk blink while you tried to work as it kept starting other services as you were logging in.  I could get older slower hardware to boot to usable 2000 faster than newer faster hardware with XP.

It didn't matter for what I needed. I could get running whatever I needed before Windows 2000 was still in the splash screen. Delayed start was beneficial to me.

As for the rest of tour post... Sure, after four or five service packs Windows 2000 should be a better OS with lots of bug fixes. IrDA was on its way out, the USB subsystem was crap before SP2 or 3 on Windows 2000, the graphics performance was never properly up to snuff and compatibility with legacy software was way worse.

The two OSes brought a lot to the table at their time, but merging enterprise with end user requirements is always a process that will penalize one thing or another.

[andersm]

XP (...) moved the video to a lower layer for performance which reduced security and stability.

That happened earlier, in NT 4.0.