As Windows 3.x turns 20... Workbench is slapped in the face like a wet fish

[Paul_s]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05...ot_0_turns_20/

What a load of bollocks. Workbench was quite superior to any Windows release at the time (1990).

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Paul_s

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05...ot_0_turns_20/

What a load of bollocks. Workbench was quite superior to any Windows release at the time (1990).

Obviously a Windows fanboy, who never owned an Amiga.

[Retro-Nerd]

A crappy 32-bit DOS GUI. Still have some nightmares of it.

[killergorilla]

Haha.

Awesome.

[kkgarbod]

All win3.x will be remembered for is solitaire and minesweeper

[Npl]

Depends which WB version you compare it to I guess, 1.x was pretty messy.
And I wouldnt use a WB without tons of unofficial enhancements (New/def icons and a shell-replacement at the very least). What really made WB cool was all the improvements from the community.

That said, I still to this day dont understand why there aint a "datatype-like" system on all OSes.

I never used any Windows before Win98

[deicidal]

Originally Posted by Npl

Depends which WB version you compare it to I guess, 1.x was pretty messy.

If I remember correctly Windows 2 was nothing more than a file manager.

[deicidal]

Originally Posted by kkgarbod

All win3.x will be remembered for is solitaire and minesweeper

Still is for solitair if you happen to be my mum, ooo I have a lap top lets just use it for playing Solitair.

[Interceptor]

i had a quick look. they said serious challenger, i didnt see thet mention anything about windows being superior.

compared to the pc, the amiga was a minority machine, and pretty much games specific. workbench was half on ROM anyway and was never going to take over as a general OS, it is missing many backend features.

and yes, i realise there will now be posts from video toaster fanboys, but that didnt tip the scales.

if it was that good we'd be using AROS by now.

[Arnie]

Windows3x was like WB1.3, for me a total pain in the ass. WB2x and above was the dogs wotsits IMO.

[desiv]

I must be one of the only people who didn't mind WB 1.3. ;-)

Admittedly, it was a bit painful initially, but I got a file manager (CLIMate, I think) with my external floppy, and that made it very useful.
I like the CLI/Shell so that wasn't a problem.
And the color thing gets blown way out of proportion. Yes, they picked "unique" colors to look good on cheap TVs. I didn't think the default colors were that bad, but still..
It was easy to change them, which I did almost right away (when you get a new Amiga with no software, there aren't that many programs to run, and I came across the screen prefs pretty easily..)

Adding a file manager and tweaking the colors made it a very good desktop, especially considering desktops at the time...

Of course, adding a file manager is kind of cheating, since it's not PART of the OS but still.. :-)

Of course, WB 3.x was much nicer.. I somehow skipped WB2.x going from my 500 to my 1200, so I don't have any real experience there...

desiv

[Retro1234]

When I was a boy we only had TripOs

[Mad-Matt]

How did commodore expect filemanagement to be done in Wb 1.x. No filemanager included and no show all files option (the only saving grace in a default wb 2.x, 3.x install - so some file management can be done).

I think apart from MsOffice, most software I was using back on a windows 3.1 machine shut windows down and ran from dos. It was that useful.

[Amiga1992]

WB1.3 was arse but so was Win3.0!!!!

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Interceptor

i had a quick look. they said serious challenger, i didnt see thet mention anything about windows being superior.

compared to the pc, the amiga was a minority machine, and pretty much games specific. workbench was half on ROM anyway and was never going to take over as a general OS, it is missing many backend features.

and yes, i realise there will now be posts from video toaster fanboys, but that didnt tip the scales.

if it was that good we'd be using AROS by now.

Thats bullshit mate. As far as a home computer goes, the Amiga wasn't a minority at all. And it was far from being games specific.

As for features, what features is workbench missing that DOS/Windows 3.1 provides?

I can't think of a single one.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

As far as a home computer goes, the Amiga wasn't a minority at all.

That's a very location-specific perception of reality.
Where I come from, it was indeed a machine of VERY FEW. It was too expensive to be afforded by families that barely afforded a Commodore 64 (the home computer revolution in here, we could say, started in the late 90s with the popularization of PC computers, I could say)

[TCD]

Windows 3.x is 5 years 'younger' than WB 1.x, so they should've compared it to Windows 1.0 which is also from 1985. Now that would be an interesting comparision Although Steve tried hard to sell it : [ Show youtube player ]

[moijk]

Originally Posted by Akira

That's a very location-specific perception of reality.
Where I come from, it was indeed a machine of VERY FEW. It was too expensive to be afforded by families that barely afforded a Commodore 64 (the home computer revolution in here, we could say, started in the late 90s with the popularization of PC computers, I could say)

the phrase was "as far as home computers go".. I would think many places in europe the Amiga was the computer in the late 80s/early 90s. Pcs grew quickly though, and by mid 90 that tide had turned. I recall drooling over a 4000/030 that I actually could afford but deciding against it since commodore was on the decline back then. Oh well.

[asm1]

At the time of Win 3.0 I was using a BBC Micro. By 1992 I was using RISC OS (2 and 3.0/1) First PC I had used win 95, which is just as well as I hated 3.x which we were forced to use at school..

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by moijk

the phrase was "as far as home computers go".. I would think many places in europe the Amiga was the computer in the late 80s/early 90s. Pcs grew quickly though, and by mid 90 that tide had turned. I recall drooling over a 4000/030 that I actually could afford but deciding against it since commodore was on the decline back then. Oh well.

Yep, the PC market was much more stable mid 90's and came into its own around the turn of the century (2000). I think what we have now is probably what you call what Commodore had in 1985 when the 1000 was launched.

Windows 7 is quite nice, Linux is doing pretty well, Apples? yuck.... and hardware is pretty much as extreme as it can be....