Windows 3.1 on 486 Laptop

Some of you seem a little stuck in time and I thought you might get a kick out of this. It's an old 486 laptop in color running Windows 3.1. The keyboard breaks in half and folds into this tiny 10" looking screen. The pictures didn't turn out good but I might try again with a better camera.

 

I'll always be in an old-school time warp! Windows 3.1 was the first operating system I ever used, and I still have great memories of it. It's still usable for just about anything except the modern Internet (though with Netscape 4.08, Opera 3.62 and/or IE5 and a good proxy most sites can still be navigated--I'm even able to log into mobile Facebook/Twitter and post statuses/respond to messages, though the options are limited and the rendering is a serious mess [with or without CSS activated]). If you regularly log into an e-mail account then I'd recommend using at least NT 3.51 or 95 at this point, since these older browsers don't support proper SSL/TLS protocols for such a purpose and none of the proxies I've tried with 3.1-compatible web browsers make it possible to log into my Gmail account.

 

I don't actually plan on using this. I was just keeping it around as a vintage piece. I bought it about 15 years ago when prices really came down. It gives a bunch of errors on startup but I'm hoping to fix this with a bios battery change.

 

Ah, okay. That makes sense. I pray that will help!

 

Windows 3.1, from what I remember, is actually still a very solid/usable OS if you have the right software installed (and there is a shockingly huge number of programs that were written for Win3.1), and for everything sans modern Internet use it still works a treat. I'm always amazed when I see 486-era machines still functional in 2018...this is in surprisingly good shape for something of its age!