Windows 3.x/3.1.14

This is a very early pre-release version of Microsoft Windows 3.1 from 1990-1991 (specifically from January), shortly after an updated version of Windows 3.0, version 3.00a, shipped in November.

Support for TrueType fonts is still in a very early stage of development, and as such is not fully working.

Planned changes in Windows 3.1 as of this point include the following:

- Rewriting the Windows applications to load all resources necessary at load time
- Printing driver not loaded by applications until printing is requested

Note that these performance improvements still had yet to be added in, but were scheduled to be added at a future date.

This pre-release version was also tested performance-wise alongside PC/GEOS on the following machines:

- Compaq 386/20 (4 MB of RAM)
- IBM 55sx 16 Mhz (2 MB of RAM)
- IBM 286AT 8 Mhz (1 MB of RAM)

The following printer was used on all three machines:

- HP LaserJet II-512K

All machines were tested under Microsoft MS-DOS 3.3, the HP LaserJet printer driver, and the "Files=30" and "Buffers=30" options specified in the CONFIG.SYS file.

For Microsoft Windows 3.1, HIMEM.SYS was used, but no networking, SmartDrive disk cache, or TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) programs. Likewise, for PC/GEOS, neither HIMEM.SYS nor networking support or TSRs were used.

Significant load times were reported while opening Write (with resources already loaded in the background).

The Windows 3.1 README.TXT file was also mentioned during the Notepad "Page Down" test.

References

PX05218