I disagree with the conclusion that "it was Windows 3.0 that put Windows on the map". The 3.0 release was, depending on your taste and requirements, pretty much

I disagree with the conclusion that "it was Windows 3.0 that put Windows on the map". The 3.0 release was, depending on your taste and requirements, pretty much equal to a lot of other desktop environments on the market at the time: OS/2, GEM, VisiON, TopView, and probably a bunch of others. Though it looked sort-of pretty at the time, mostly compared to its previous releases, it didn't really do anything that users truly wanted from a new OS (which was, mostly, 'run Lotus or dBase better'). Only when 3.1 was released, with DPMI which, despite being a pretty obscure technology in itself, was an absolute game-changer, as well as the foundations of the never-named (but critically important) VxD "overlay OS", Windows became the powerhouse it still is, at least on the desktop, today. The "3.11 for Workgroups" release (which should really have been 4.0: the VxD layer was greatly enhanced to great effect, and for the first time Windows had useful networking facilities!) cemented that position. But 3.0 was really pretty "meh", and history could have gone a few other directions at the time of its release...