Windows 3.x reaches end of life

Most recently we were seeing plenty of fuss over the coming end of Windows XP, but it turns out that another, much older Windows OS has finally been discontinued. Yup, Windows 3.x licensing has been officially discontinued as of this past November 1.

I am sure it is pretty safe to say that most have long since forgotten this 18 year old OS, but there were still plenty running it, of course they included items such as cash registers and in-flight entertainment systems and not your average household PC.

So, November 1, 2008 has become the last day anyone could have purchased a license, but it is important to point out that support for Windows 3.x ended back in December of 2001, and any licenses from that point were for the OS as an embedded system.

As anyone who has been around computers for a long time will realize, this once breakthrough OS is now not any more powerful than something many carry around in their pocket on a handheld device. The system requirements were a measly Intel 80286 (or higher) processor with 1 MB or more of memory and 6.5 MB of free disk space although 9 MB was recommended. That’s a far cry from the 1GHz processor and 20GB of hard drive space that Vista requires.

Read [BBC]