A table at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle.mspx tells us that MS-DOS & Windows 3.x (as well as Windows 95 and NT 3.5x) reached their "End of Life" (as defined by Microsoft) on December 31, 2002. Happy New Year! So MS-DOS & 3.x are now officially dead products. Does this mean Microsoft will at long last declare them FreeWare Product?

LoL.I have been watching this myself.unfortunatly the way software is copyrighted it will be many many years befor Microsoft has to worry about not having a legal right to pretect its software.That and you know they will spend alot more than they woll ever make trying to stop anyone from getting the software for free.Long live freeware.

I got some good DOS systems and a 3.1 for £3 each a few years ago, and more recently some utilities for both for free. Even now with ME I am still fond of Dos and 3.1, the way the files look in the dir c:\ command and in the file manager. If I ever sit down to write something of some enormity, I can see myself doing it with these deliberately.

Heh, End Of Life? Windows 3.1? Not yet..I found one support article on there servers today. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q85/1/94.asp Thats the Top Questions and Answers for Windows 3.1. End Of Life would be not a trace of Windows 3.1 support on there site.

It is estimated that becuase of the long period of time during which windows 3.1 was distrubuted (several years) that there are still thousands of computers in North America which use Windows 3.1 or WFW. Those people are happy with it. I have 2 computers with Windows 3.1, and they both work WAY better than my windows 98 and XP machines combined. When Microsoft crapped up windows by adding a bunch of useless features, they ruined the wonderful thing that windows COULD have been. Unfortunately, they would rather make money than please their customers.

Dear WinMan31 ~ End of Life is Microsofts statement NOT mine! Read it at @ http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle.mspx They also still have DOS & Windows 3x & 95 downloads, patchs and drivers @ ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib For how long I have no idea!

Although they no longer consider these OS's to be alive what they really mean it that intesive support and licensing for these OS's in now gone indefinitely. Isn't it a little odd that NT 4.0 is lasting as long as 98 and ME? I know it is still widely used in business and schools but many companies have replaced there computers with 2000 and some have already moved to XP. And ME is so worthless to Microsoft that it is going to be cut off with 98, they just built it for the soul purpose of being the last DOS/WINDOWS hybrid, and I guess they had some programs from 2000 that sorta worked for ME so they tossed them in there.