First question: which electronics manufacturers embed Windows 3.11 for Workgroups in their products? Second question, and much more pressing: why?

We ask merely because Microsoft has told world+dog it’s withdrawing the ancient operating system from the embedded market. In November 2008. So this gives manufacturers plenty of time to move onto something more modern… like Windows 95, maybe.

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups was released in November 1993, in an age when Microsoft took less than six or seven years to release operating systems. It was replaced by Windows 95 and has been unavailable for retail and OEM sales for, umm, a very long time indeed.

As Microsoft’s John Coyne notes, the third funeral for Windows 3.11 for Workgroups marks the “end of an era”. But there will be few mourners: everyone who actually remembers using this operating system is long gone. ®

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