- Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another video.
Now, in today's episode, we're going to be trying out the PCWorld
Windows 3.0 Test Drive.
Now, this right here is a very interesting demo version of Windows 3.0
that was made available to InfoWorld subscribers in 1990
and it was a very easy way to experience Windows
3.0 and get used to the user interface and the new features
without actually buying it because this was made available for free
You just had to send in a response card in a particular issue of InfoWorld
and you had to be lucky enough to do it within a 15 day window.
Yes, this was extremely limited from June 15th to June 30th, 1990.
So if you were like out of town when you got this issue mailed to you.
Well, tough luck. Unfortunately you missed out.
Now the PCWorld name comes from the fact that it was printed next
to a subscription offer for PCWorld,
but you didn't have to subscribe to that magazine to get in on this.
You just had to mail in that response card.
So we're going to pop in diskette #1
into the 98 PC’s floppy disk drive.
And we're going to install this and I'll show you
the limitations of this version and how it differs
from a full version of Windows 3.0, which it does substantially.
So we're going to run setup here.
Now the setup process is extremely similar to the full
version of Windows 3.0, though it does make some changes.
It mentions the PCWorld Test Drive specifically
there is a phone number
to call for product support we'll come back to that later on.
And it mentions that if you want to order
the full Windows product, the full version of Windows 3,
you had to contact your local Windows dealer.
So we're going to press Enter to continue.
It's going to ask us where we want to install it.
We'll go with the default directory and it'll begin copying files.
Now, instead of six diskettes, that you had with Windows 3.0, you've got 2.
But it does include
not only the demo program
that is designed to take you through the new features
and everything, which is kind of the main purpose of this.
But it also includes a handful of applications from Windows 3.0.
And we'll get into that once we load into it.
So you see it
launches into the graphical portion of the setup much faster,
and it will ask us for disk 2 momentarily here.
And you can see one of those applications is Windows Solitaire.
Yes, we have solitaire in here, which is a really nice addition,
I have to say.
Really appreciate them, including that in here.
And so now it asks us for Windows 3.0 test drive, disk number two.
So we'll pop out diskette #1
and we'll put in diskette #2 here and press enter
(the signature MJD timelapse music)
it's got to install those fonts.
And there we go. You're done.
So we're gonna go ahead and return to DOS here.
So we'll get out of that.
We will eject the diskette from the drive
and now we're in the C:\Windows directory.
So we're just going to type “win” to load in to Windows 3.0 and there it is.
So you see by default, it's got a different theme applied,
I guess to kind of distinguish it
from the full version though, you could obviously apply this
theme in the full version of Windows 3.0 just fine.
But it's a neat little change that they made there.
More importantly, though,
we only have four applications compared to the multitude of applications
in the full version,
we've got Test Drive, File Manager, Control Panel, and Solitaire.
Now, these three applications here are just copied over from Windows
3.0 with a very important modification added that I'll touch on later on.
But the application that is new and unique to this demo
version of 3.0 is the Test Drive program right here.
And this is kind of the main purpose of this entire thing.
Yes, you can
try out and experience the interface and use those three additional programs,
but the main purpose of this is for you to launch this test drive program.
Go in here and go through this interactive tutorial
and guide to learn how to use Windows 3.0.
If you were thinking about buying it and seeing
if it was something that you were interested in.
So we're going to go here and press the first option up here,
which is click here to start, and it takes you to the main menu here.
But this is actually just slide number one.
If I use the arrow keys here, I can advance through.
And you see at the bottom
left, we've got that diamond there that will change the page number for us.
But there are buttons that you can click to navigate around and jump
to certain points in the interactive presentation here.
If you click on the PC World Guide to Windows 3.0, it'll jump
you to page number two where you've got these two other options here.
But if you click on Power Tips, it'll jump you to page 27.
And this is essentially a list of various power
tips that would have been printed in PC World magazine,
but they're just consolidated here and much easier for you to access.
So if I want to go to word processing, for example,
and click on, let's see professional right page jump.
So I click on this and then it tells you what the tip is.
Here's a quick way to jump to a page in Professional Write 2.0
just press CTRL+J, enter the desired page number, and press enter.
We can go back here and let's say we want to go to Windows 3.0
and let's do power tip number one, browsing directories with file search.
And it gives you a description of that tip here.
Windows 3.0’s File Manager has a handy search command that accepts DOS wild card file specs.
Fun fact, the File Explorer in Windows 10 and Windows 11
still behaves that way.
You can use DOS Wild Cards, which is very,
very useful if you're searching for a particular file type.
So yeah, it goes there and tells you about that.
And that's why the file manager was likely included in here
so you could try this particular tip out and the various other tips
that are going to pertain to file
explorer or not file explorer file manager in here.
If you want to go back to the main page, you click on this button right here
and that'll bring you to this hyper media map rather.
And you can click on the main menu to go back to that page that we were on.
And we're going to click on the guide to Windows 3.0
and let's click on what is Windows 3.0.
That's a question I've always asked myself.
What is Windows 3.0?
Well, it's a kind of supershell, a powerful and easy to use,
graphical user interface that runs on top of DOS
and turns your computer into a highly efficient business tool,
which is a really fancy way of saying it's an operating environment.
That runs on top of DOS.
But hey, it's still an accurate definition in my book.
And then you've got some more buttons down here.
And you can also go back to the 3.0 power tips.
Let's click on System Requirements and Benefits.
Ooh. Okay.
So you got some nice graphics here selecting a display.
By the way, there was both a VGA
version of this test drive and an EGA version.
So we're obviously using the VGA version here.
But if you had an EGA monitor, you could use the well, the EGA version.
But this flowchart view is extremely useful at jumping
to a specific point in this interactive presentation.
So if all you wanted to do was go to the tool section and view
information about these various tools that come included with Windows 3.0,
you can do that. So I can click on Paintbrush here.
It'll give me a brief description of it and how I can use it, what it does,
I can go back and click on other accessories
and view some other accessories that come with Windows 3.0, though
I can't click on these to get a more detailed description of it.
But I mean, for most of these, they're they're extremely self-explanatory.
A calculator is a calculator standard or scientific, a clock.
It can be shrunk.
You can do that, shrink the window size, all that good stuff.
But yeah, you know,
it's a really nice little presentation, actually, a very detailed presentation.
I should say, that walks you through how to use Windows 3.0
and what you would need to run it.
So when you're done, you would click on Exit
the program manager here and it'll say, Do you really want to quit?
We'll say, Okay, and you'll say, Okay, thanks for using.
And then before it quits and jumps you to this Windows basic screen here,
which is extremely useful
because you're about to exit and go back into program manager.
So if you didn't know how to navigate within program manager,
this gives you a little guide on how to do that,
how you can close windows, how you can maximize and shrink windows,
how you can scroll through windows, how you can change the boarder size,
all that good stuff. So we're going to click on Okay.
And now we're back here at the program manager.
Now these three programs, like I said, they are just
essentially copied over from the full version of Windows 3.0.
So I got a file manager here.
I can go in here, I can go to the A drive if I want to.
It's not going to read anything
because there's nothing in the A drive, but, you know, you get the point.
I can browse into my Windows folder.
I can view all the files on here if I want to launch something directly
from here.
Now, there are I mean, those four programs that we have
in the program group are not technically the only programs on here.
You've got things like WinVer.
I can open up a WinVer here.
Let's see what else we got.
We've got of course, task manager.
You're going to definitely want that in here.
Of course. Solitaire.
You got the setup executable. Of course.
Program Manager, definitely need that.
This right here is the tutorial application so I can launch it here.
It's same thing we just went through and of course, control panel
so we can go in here and change the theme if we want to.
And so let's go to color here.
And so it's set to the Arizona color scheme. Okay.
So that is a, an actual color scheme in Windows 3.0.
So we can change it to Windows default if we want to.
And there we go.
So that's looking more like default Windows 3.0.
Well, you know, I do like that Arizona color scheme.
Let's change it to let's see.
Let's go with fluorescent.
Yeah, that's what we want right there, actually.
We're going to kind of we're going to really screw this up here.
I mean, come on.
We have to I mean, when you
when you have the opportunity to mess with the Windows
Color Scheme, you're going to mess it up.
I mean, it's just it's just an unspoken rule, especially for this channel.
So let's go to the color palette here.
Let's make the window background here, the application workspace.
Let's make that a nice neon green.
Let's make the menu bar a nice...
let’s go with red there. I’ll make the active title bar...
Oh, gosh, what do we want to do? Let's do this like checkered pattern here.
Inactive.
We'll make that pink and we'll make the window
background yellow and the window text white.
Beautiful. So we'll save that and...
Oh, yeah, this is looking wonderful.
Actually, I mean, not- I can't believe I’m gonna say this but it's not half bad.
I mean. Yeah, it's not.
I mean, if you change the, the background of the program manager
window background here or the application workspace
to something else
and you get rid of the red title bar, I think that looks pretty good.
That looks pretty, pretty nice.
And of course, last but not least, we have solitaire which is a very
important addition actually because the main purpose of solitaire,
this version of solitaire here was to teach people how to use the mouse.
How to get accustomed to using the mouse in a fun and interactive way.
And it definitely accomplished that because, well, people
spend a lot of time playing solitaire.
When you had downtime at the office and that sort of thing.
So yeah, we'll close out of that.
Now, I'm sure you guys are wondering...
“Okay, so you say it is limited to running these four applications.
What happens when you try to run another Windows program?”
Like if you went out and bought Microsoft Office or everybody's
favorite “RAM doubling software” SoftRAM 95 and you tried to put it
into your floppy diskette drive and run the setup file
What's going to happen? Well, it's not going to work.
And let me show you.
So I've got the SoftRAM, totally legit program installation.
diskette here, we're going to put it in.
We'll go to the A drive, and we'll run SETUP.EXE... what happens?
Well, it's going to say
and you can barely make it out there because of the way I’ve got the theme configured.
“The application you're trying to run is a full featured application.
This demonstration version of Windows runs only demonstration applications
to run your application,
see your Windows Dealer to purchase the full version of Windows.”
This is because this version of Windows has been modified
to where whenever you try to run an application,
it checks for a “DEMOAPP” string in the application header.
And that needs to be there for the application
to properly execute if it's not there, you'll get that error message.
So all of these applications here have that modification.
So it allows them to run even though they are essentially the same program.
This is not a demo version of solitaire.
It's full fledged solitaire, just with that modification made to
where it will allow the demo version of Windows to run it.
Now, it is certainly possible to make this modification yourself
and add this string to an executable’s application header,
but that is something that an average computer user from 1990
is not going to possess both the tools and the know-how to do it.
So this limitation worked really well and prevented people
from just using this as a free copy of Windows 3.0.
But for what it is, it's a really cool little demo of Windows 3.0
and it does exactly what you would want a demo program to do.
There's one more thing though that I have to do
before we head out of here, and that is we got to call this phone number.
I just have to do this because one of the things
that inspired me to make this video was a tweet that I saw from
Windows On Windows, a channel I've been following for years.
And he posted a little blurb about this and talked about what it was.
And PCWorld actually, quote-tweeted his tweet
and said “Don't call the phone number.”
So you know what we're going to do?
We're going to call the phone number.
So let me pull up my phone here.
I highly doubt- I mean, I don't know, maybe this is still a PCWorld phone number
maybe they still own this
or maybe this is going to call some random guy
and he's going to be like, “what on Earth-
What on Earth are you doing?”
So okay, 415-978-3384.
Let's call
(Phone) “The number you have dialed is *inaudible*
(Michael) The number you have dialed is united?
Is that what he said? Hang on. I think that was like a cut there.
Let's go, let's, let's try that again on located.
(Phone) “*inaudible* is unallocated”
Okay.
So it cut off the right at the beginning, but I made that out.
It said “the number you've dialed is unallocated.”
Okay.
So yeah, mystery solved.
It's not, it's not a valid phone number anymore.
It's unallocated as that very interesting recording
that I've not heard before said.
One other thing that's worth mentioning is this demo version of Windows
3.0 was not the only demo version of Windows 3.0.
There's at least one
other version that I know of, and that is the Microsoft Excel demo,
but it ran under a Windows 3.0 Shell because,
well, to run that version of Excel, it had to run under Windows.
So that's how Microsoft did it.
And this was also a PCWorld thing.
It was much newer, though.
It was distributed on three and a half inch diskettes.
As opposed to five and a quarter inch diskettes, like this version was here.
I know these aren't five and a quarter inch diskettes,
but I just copied them over to the three and a half inch diskettes.
because I don't have a five and a quarter inch drive on this computer.
But yes, it essentially accomplished the same thing just with Excel.
It allowed you to try it out
and it walks you through how to do various things with it.
But it was more limited than this version here
because you didn't have these three additional programs.
And it also had that same application limitation.
So you could not run any application that did not have that “DEMOAPP”
string in the application header.
It would give you that same exact error message.
So I think this is pretty cool, guys.
I think it would have been really neat to try this out back in 1990
and hey if any of you guys actually did that,
if you were an InfoWorld subscriber and mailed in that card
and actually got a copy of this, be sure to let us know
down in the comments what your experience was like.
But that's pretty much going to wrap it up for today's video guys.
I hope you enjoyed this one, if you did
be sure to give it a thumbs up,
be sure to get subscribed down below, turn on notifications, all that good stuff.
And as always, I want to thank you all so much for watching and I will see you
in the next video.
(outro music)