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#1 2008-07-10 2:24 am
- Bat
- Adult's Play
- Royal Wombat
- From: Björk, Björk
- Registered: 2001-05-14
- Posts: 24317
OEM licensing for Windows 3.11 ending in 4 months
What to Boot Camp on now?! Sturner will be heartbroken!! 
Believe it or not, that headline is not a typo. John Coyne, Systems Engineer in the OEM Embedded Devices group at Microsoft, has posted a quick blog entry that broke the bad news: as of November 1, 2008, Microsoft will no longer allow OEMs to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. That's exactly 15 years after it shipped in November 1993! Poor OEMs have so much to put up with these days; first Windows XP, and now this!
Windows for Workgroups 3.11 has of course been unavailable in retail and via client OEMs for years, but the embedded industry wanted to keep this ancient operating system around for much, much longer.
I'm not sure I want to believe this. How can Microsoft possibly discontinue an old operating system that has been around for so long and is so well trusted? Maybe I'll start a petition to save it! I don't want to move to something more bloated and resource-hungry if I can stay with good old Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Why fix what isn't broken? I don't like the new, the old works just fine!
Honestly though, this brings up an interesting perspective on the embedded industry. It needs a swift kick telling it to stay with the times! Who wants to take bets on how long Windows XP Embedded will end up being supported until?
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion - George Bernard Shaw
"Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."
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#2 2008-07-10 8:18 am
- mrreet2001
- Member
- From: NW Ohio
- Registered: 2005-05-25
- Posts: 2751
Re: OEM licensing for Windows 3.11 ending in 4 months
Rest in peace.
Cheers: to a OS that hardly ever borked, but at the same time never really did anything to begin with.
2.2Ghz BlackMB---15" 2.4Ghz MBP(work)---Dual 2.3Ghz G5 (4G Ram, 2x 250G HD)---1.5GHz Powerbook---1.6Ghz G5 iMac ---500Mhz iMac DV
2.4GHz PC --- 1.2Ghz PC laptop
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#3 2008-07-10 2:46 pm
- sturner
- Royal High Poobah
- Moderator
- From: Carrollton, TX USA
- Registered: 2000-01-31
- Posts: 10052
Re: OEM licensing for Windows 3.11 ending in 4 months
Gee, I don't know what to say.
The passing of an era.
It made some of my work easier, but I left it when others came available. (Except for ME of course.)
"There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever [as to refrain from doing magic when you knew how easy it was], and on many of them the grass would never grow again." Terry Prachett
There are 3 types of people, those who can count and those who can't.
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#4 2008-11-05 4:33 pm
- Bat
- Adult's Play
- Royal Wombat
- From: Björk, Björk
- Registered: 2001-05-14
- Posts: 24317
Re: OEM licensing for Windows 3.11 ending in 4 months
It's dead, Jim.
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.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion - George Bernard Shaw
"Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."
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#5 2008-11-14 10:41 pm
- yourcruise
- Member
- Registered: 2008-11-14
- Posts: 1
Re: OEM licensing for Windows 3.11 ending in 4 months
Wow I thought that would have died long ago. I can stil remember my floppies from 3.11 lol
Mac Geek
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#6 2008-11-15 3:08 am
- Bat
- Adult's Play
- Royal Wombat
- From: Björk, Björk
- Registered: 2001-05-14
- Posts: 24317
Re: OEM licensing for Windows 3.11 ending in 4 months
Embedded OSes have a long life.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion - George Bernard Shaw
"Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax, and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."
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