Win 3.1: Gone, But Not Forgotten
Since WinMag started its furious coverage of Win95, we've been
inundated with calls and e-mails from Win 3.1 users begging us
not to forget Windows' roots. We've done our best to answer those
pleas with relatively balanced coverage of the OSes in the print
and electronic versions of our magazine--and as you'll notice
while navigating through this special blowout, our shareware coverage
is no exception.
While this feature focuses mainly on Win95 shareware and resources,
we've kept our Win 3.1 loyalists in mind and have provided, when
possible, 16-bit versions of all the featured programs. In addition,
many of the Win95 shareware libraries listed also contain indexes
of 16-bit programs.
To help get you started with sources for Win 3.1 shareware, here's
a quick breakdown of Web sites and online areas that provide pretty
extensive libraries of 16-bit shareware.
- Featured in the sidebar, "Shareware? Six Libraries to
Check Out," CNET's Shareware.com (http://www.shareware.com) and
TUCOWS-"The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software"-(http://www.tucows.com) also
both provide well-indexed libraries of 16-bit programs. Shareware.com
offers an index organized by most popular, newest arrivals, and
top picks in categories such as games, education and utilities.
TUCOWS provides a wide range of categories and also highlights
the latest additions to its collection.
- Stroud's CWSApps List (http://www.cwsapps.com/) includes
the "Consummate Winsock Applications" list of the best
16-bit Internet products, plus a library of applications sorted
by 30 categories and product name. The site also highlights its
latest Win 3.x additions.
- At press time, Jumbo! (http://www.jumbo.com) claimed
to house more than 72,000 programs. It features an OS-specific
search engine, 15 categories and brief product descriptions.
- It's not pretty, and program descriptions are brief--but WinSite
(http://www.winsite.com) offers
an exhaustive index of Win 3.x programs. You can either browse
the library by subject or use the search engine to locate specific
apps. Estimated download times and the contents of the zip files
are listed for each program respectively.
- Finally, the sites on America Online (Keyword Windows) and
CompuServe (GO: Winshare and Winfun) mentioned the "Six Libraries"
sidebar also contain tons of 16-bit applications, all rigorously
indexed by category, date and file name. They're worthy competitors
to the Internet sites above if you're a diehard online service
fan.
Still can't find what you're looking for? Drop me a line at psilverm@cmp.com.
--Paul Silverman
Copyright © 1996 CMP Media Inc.